


Something More Than Fictions

by LoneWulffe



Series: Paradise in a Dream [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Development, Developing Friendships, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-05 16:51:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13392084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoneWulffe/pseuds/LoneWulffe
Summary: Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,Unnatural and full of contradictions;Yet others of our most romantic schemesAre something more than fictions.– Thomas Hood, The Haunted House, Part IOne is the last daughter of a dead planet, trapped in the Phantom Zone. The other is the sole prince of a decimated kingdom, adrift in the Well of Stars.They both dream... and in those dreams, they meet.





	1. Introductions

**Author's Note:**

> No betas were placed in lotus eater machines for this fic.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara and Mon-El meet for the first time. It doesn't go well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you might have guessed, this is seriously AU but will still adhere to a good chunk of canon events. Confused? Just bear with me please.

She awoke slowly and for that one brief hazy moment, Kara was unaware of anything beyond a vague sense of peace that seemed to fill her from head to toe. Contentedly drowsy, she brought a hand up to her face and made a half-hearted effort to rub the sleep out of her eyes.

It was not until she was fully conscious that she realised the strangeness of her situation and bolted up in a sitting position.

The sight that greeted her was beyond mystifying – alarmingly so. She was in a field covered in some kind of flowerless green plant that came up to her shoulders and swayed carelessly as if moved by a wind she could not feel. There was not another soul in sight.

“Where... where am I?” she asked out loud even if it was clear that there was no one around to give her an answer.

The last thing she remembered was... was...

Her parents. Kal-El. Krypton dying. Worry. The darkness of space. Terror. The feeling that the pod was so, so small – _too_ small – and would not endure the assault of the debris-

The pod.

She scrambled to her feet and turned frantically from left to right but no matter where she looked, there was no sight of the pod her mother had placed her in to save her from sharing their planet's fate. If she had indeed crashed somewhere, why was she lying out in the open instead of sitting inside the pod and _where was the pod_?

None of this made sense.

Panic began to slowly set in and she hugged herself tight in an effort to keep it from overwhelming her. There had to be a logical explanation for all this. All she had to do was figure it out. Fear was irrational and it would do her no good to give in to it. She held on to that fact as she squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to calm down.

_Deep breaths, Kara. Deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out._

Once she was reasonably sure that her heart rate was back to normal for the most part and she wasn't in danger of hyperventilating, she opened her eyes and scanned her surroundings again. A second look merely confirmed what she had seen and deduced the first time around: she was alone in a strange location and her pod was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the only thing that was remotely familiar was the sight of a red sun floating in the sky... and she couldn't even be sure if it was Rao. For all she knew, she'd just happened to have been transported to a solar system that by chance also orbited a red sun.

She had so many questions but could not find a single answer for any of them. There was only one thing to do: look for them.

So Kara squared her shoulders, stuck her chin out, picked a direction at random and began walking.

As she walked, a few other details about her current mysterious whereabouts made themselves known and she took note of all of them. The first one that had registered was the fact that the ground was firm and flat beneath her feet – something to be grateful for since it meant she was unlikely to be in danger of tripping over anything or falling through it and down some hole. Additionally, the vegetation covering the field she was in was impossibly soft to the touch and gave way easily underfoot but sprang back up again the moment she stepped away, looking for all the world as if it had not been disturbed even the slightest bit.

Even the red sun shining overhead became an oddity once she realised that nothing around her was tinted red unlike how everything under Rao's light had been back on Krypton. Instead, the sky was a brilliant blue and the plants around her were a soft shade of green. It reminded her of the times her family had visited planets which orbited yellow suns and the less intense rays of their stars had allowed the true colours of everything under it to truly shine.

Her family.

She halted in her tracks as the full reality of her situation hit her for the first time since she had woken up. Her mother, her father, her uncle and aunt... everyone she knew and loved was dead along with everyone else on Krypton. Her home, her planet... everything was gone. The only person she had left was her baby cousin and he was nowhere to be found in this strange place she was aimlessly exploring this very second.

A small voice at the back of her head whispered of what-ifs and worst case scenarios. She shut it down with a vengeance and willed herself not to cry. Kal-El had to be alive somewhere. He had to be. She wouldn't accept any other possibility. With that thought weighing heavily on her mind, she blindly clutched at the one thing she had to remind her of everything she had lost – the necklace hanging around her neck. It was a source of reassurance in a situation where said reassurance was hard to find.

Lost as she was in her sudden bout of melancholy, it took Kara a moment to notice an irregularity up ahead – one that, amidst all the oddities around her, was a most welcome sight: there was a void in the vegetation a short distance in front of her.

In light of everything she knew about the plants she had been walking amongst for the past Rao knew how long – admittedly rather limited for understandable reasons –, there was only one conclusion to be drawn.

Something was lying there unmoving and keeping it flattened.

Relief flooded her entire being and she propelled herself forward, stumbling in her haste to reach whatever was causing that indentation in the vegetation. At this point, she didn't care if it happened to be just a piece of debris from her damaged pod; regardless of what she was going to find, she was almost sure that she could get at least some answers out of it even if she had to study every minute detail on it and take it apart with her bare hands.

Then she got close enough to see it and the shock of the sight before her made her slow down until she finally stopped a short distance away.

What was flattening the plants was not a 'something' but rather a 'someone'.

A man, in fact.

The relief she had felt earlier faded a little and was replaced by trepidation even as curiosity compelled her to continue approaching him. For a brief moment, she thought that he might be dead but then she noticed his chest rising and falling ever so slightly. Okay, good. At least he was just sleeping and she wasn't looking at a corpse. That was one less thing to worry about.

As she edged closer, she studied his features in an effort to figure out something about him. He looked... well, normal, for one. His hair which was a shade of brown so dark it almost looked black was neatly cut, his face was clean-shaven and he was wearing long black pants and a tight-fitting red shirt with sleeves that stretched all the way to his wrists and a loose round collar. Could he be another Kryptonian who had managed to escape the destruction of their planet somehow? The possibility filled her with hope. Maybe she and Kal-El weren't the only survivors and he could help her find her cousin.

Buoyed by that thought, she knelt down next to him and, after a brief moment of hesitation, reached out to shake him lightly. “Excuse me,” she found herself whispering, unsure what exactly one was supposed to say when they were trying to wake a complete stranger. “Wake up please.”

The man stirred and when he finally opened his eyes, Kara found herself confronted with the most intriguing mixture of blue and grey she had ever seen.

Her reverie and the comfort she had drawn from the stranger's quick awakening were equally short-lived, however, as he opened his mouth and proceeded to say something in a language that was completely foreign to her ears.

“Um...” It was impossible for her heart not to sink. So he wasn't a Kryptonian after all. “Do you... do you speak Kryptonian?” she asked timidly, hoping against hope that they would at least be able to understand each other.

The man scowled as he sat up and she got the feeling that she'd said something wrong for some unfathomable reason. “You're a Kryptonian?” he asked in perfect if somewhat accented Kryptonian.

“Y-Yes.” There didn't seem to be any point in trying to lie, not when she had already given herself away. “My name is Kara Zor-El.”

His scowl deepened and the last embers of her relief from earlier died only to be replaced by a growing sense of disquiet. “Zor-El?” he repeated. “You're from the house of El?”

Her unease multiplied tenfold. “Why do you know about my family? Who _are_ you?”

The stranger got to his feet and stared down at her critically as if sizing her up – something which irritated her immensely – before he answered. “I suppose it would be rude of me not to answer your question especially since you gave me your name so freely. Very well.” He drew himself up to his full height. “I am Prince Mon-El of Daxam.”

Fear lanced through her and Kara frantically scrambled away from him. The crown prince of Krypton's hated sister planet. That was who she was currently facing. Instead of finding someone who could provide her with answers and a sense of safety to some degree, she was now in more danger than she could possibly imagine. “Y-You...!” she stuttered accusingly, a million thoughts running through her mind as panic and anger warred for control inside her. “This is your fault, isn't it?! What did you do to me?!”

“Excuse me, 'my fault'?” he asked in an affronted tone although he thankfully didn't move as she stood up a good distance away from him. “And you're actually asking what _I_ did to you? Let me remind you that _you_ were the one who woke _me_ up. I should be the one asking _you_ that question.”

“I didn't do anything besides wake you up!” she yelled hotly. “You were just lying there when I found you! Besides, _you're_ the Daxamite! And the prince, no less! You probably kidnapped me and brought me here, wherever here is!” She waved her arms in a sweeping motion. “Just admit what you did and tell me where we are!”

He let out a bark of laughter at her outburst. “And Kryptonians consider themselves to be so smart,” he muttered more to himself than anything before he refocused his annoyed gaze on her. “First question: If I kidnapped you, why exactly would I have allowed you to run around free while I was asleep, therefore allowing you to harm me in some way when I'm unable to fight back? Second question: What assurance do I have that this isn't a trap you Kryptonians set for me and you're just bait or a distraction of some kind?”

She sputtered incoherently, unwilling to admit that he had presented very valid arguments even as she mentally scrambled for some halfway decent retort to throw back at him. “H-How should I know?! Maybe you're just trying to trick me! Or you're so stupidly overconfident that you think you don't have to worry about a child getting the better of you! And as for your second question, I resent the accusation! Kryptonians aren't sneaky dishonourable people like Daxamites!”

“Unbelievable.” He chuckled darkly as a patronising smirk crossed his face. “First you accuse me of being a criminal and then you accuse me of being an _incompetent_ criminal. Good to know the legendary Kryptonian predisposition towards condescending insults is pretty much genetic considering even a child like you is already spitting them out like it comes naturally to her. And you should know that it's only because you're a child that I'm letting that second part slide. I wouldn't expect someone your age to be capable of seeing anything beyond the self-aggrandising stories your parents probably spoon-fed you about your precious planet from the day you were born.”

The slight against her intelligence and culture stung, but it was the dismissive mention of her parents that cut deep. “Don't... don't talk about my parents like that,” she bit out as she blinked away her tears. She would not cry in front of him. She refused to give him that satisfaction.

“Oh, and suddenly you're offended?” he drawled with one raised eyebrow. “It's fine for you to hurl all sorts of baseless accusations and misguided slurs at me but I can't even make one offhand comment about your parents?”

“Shut up! You don't know anything about me!” she yelled fiercely, clenching her fists so tightly she could feel her nails cutting into her palms. The pain was a welcome distraction from the ache in her chest but it did little to stop her tears from further clouding her vision.

“And you don't know anything about me,” he retorted smoothly. “So I suggest you keep your prejudices and misconceptions to yourself from now on.”

Kara couldn't remember the last time she'd ever been so angry. “I don't have to listen to you or do anything you say!” With that, she spun on her heels and began trying to retrace her steps in an effort to put as much distance between them as possible.

“Where do you think you're going?” the Daxamite called out from behind her.

“Away from you!” she yelled without looking back. “Don't follow me!”

“Wasn't planning to!” he shouted, sounding slightly farther than before. Good. That meant he really was going to stay put.

Once she thought she was sure he was no longer within hearing distance, she let out a sob and furiously wiped away the tears streaming down her face. Even though she had told herself earlier not to panic or cry, it was hard to follow her own advice in light of the gravity of her circumstances. She didn't know where she was or how she'd ended up in this place and the only other person she'd come across so far was the worst individual she could ever imagine herself being stuck in an unfamiliar situation with... and that's if she chose to believe that he had nothing to do with her predicament.

There was no way things could get any worse.

Just then, she looked up and noticed that there was someone standing a good distance up ahead. Against her better judgement, she allowed her recently extinguished hope to flicker back to life. Maybe there was someone else on this planet aside from her and that Daxamite prince... and maybe they could provide her with the answers she wanted.

Her belief that things were going to take a turn for the better propelled her forward and she all but ran towards the figure in front of her-

-only to stumble as she forced herself to stop in her tracks abruptly once she was close enough to see the person's features.

“It can't be,” she mumbled out loud disbelievingly. “This... this isn't possible.”

But she'd walked away in a straight line! She was sure she hadn't even turned either to the left or right the slightest bit!

So how in Rao's name was she once again looking at the Daxamite prince – the very person she'd left behind her not a short while ago?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first confession: This is a crazy experiment of a fic. I have no idea where the idea came from but now it's taken root in my mind and won't leave so I had to write it.  
> Second confession: It's insanely long. I think you can guess how crazy long it promises to get considering where I've chosen to start in the canon timeline. As I write this, I've mapped out about three arcs so far and it's almost a guarantee that it won't end there.  
> Third confession: This is the first time I've ever attempted to write something this insane. While I have tried to write multi-chapter fics before, none of them have ever been finished (not for lack of trying, I assure you, but things just happen) and none of them were ever going to be this massive but I'm committed-
> 
> Friend: YOU SHOULD BE!
> 
> (punts friend into the Phantom Zone)
> 
> ...As I was saying, I'm dedicated to this ship in a way I've never been to any of my trillion other ships so hopefully I'll actually see this one to the end. (Assuming people don't lose interest after a couple of updates or hate it outright from the start, that is.) If I could ask you guys for a favour, it would be to help ensure I at least try to finish this herculean task. Tie me to the mast if you have to- wait, where did those chains come from and who brought them?!
> 
> On a more serious note, I do have a proper request for help: Can anyone give me a crash course on: a) Krypton's culture and history, and b) Daxam's culture and history? Also, are there any other relevant can-somewhat-fit-into-show-canon details to know about comic!Mon-El besides his love for archaeology and skill with tech? I'd do the research myself but I don't really have the time to spare and I'm afraid of mixing things up what with all the continuities floating around. Oh, and some confirmation of Kara's background (especially what her supposed role/purpose/whatever Krypton called their "people-engineering for the sake of fulfilling a specific place in our perfect society" system was) would be awesome too. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated and you will be credited; if you want, I could even repay you in fics. Thanks in advance!


	2. Loneliness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mon-El recalls the events prior to him waking up in the field and makes a surprising decision where Kara is concerned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The AU nature of this fic ramps up here. Uh, hope you guys are fond of flashbacks and Mon-El getting a more fleshed out backstory compared to what he got on the show?

Mon-El resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he watched the girl storm away from him. It was hardly charitable of him but he found it difficult not to think of every single stereotype associated with Kryptonians and how she had showcased nearly all of them in the short span of time they'd interacted. He had meant it as a joke – albeit a rather harsh one at her expense – but considering how she had behaved, it really did seem like her people were genetically predisposed to looking down on everyone else.

But that was a topic for another time. Figuring out some answers to the many questions about his current situation was his top priority, not contemplating the possible source of the arrogance that came naturally to his people's sworn enemies.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he tried to recall the events that had, as far as he was aware, occurred shortly before he had woken up in this mysterious place.

 

* * *

 

Pain. Literal blinding pain.

Mon-El groaned out loud when the curtains in his bedroom were thrown wide open, allowing Rao's light to stream in and hit his face. “Shut that damn thing off,” he complained as he attempted to block the sunbeams trying to stab out his eyes with his hand and rolled away from the window.

“As 'that damn thing' is Rao itself,” boomed a crotchety voice – grife, the volume; now even his ears hurt – from somewhere beside him, “I am afraid to tell Your Highness that shutting it off is beyond my capabilities.”

“Then close the damn curtains again and leave me alone,” he grumbled as he yanked his pillow out from under his head and covered his face with it. The actions and the ongoing commotion finally roused his bedmate – what was her name again? – who promptly shrieked upon waking up to find an unexpected third person in the room. Grife, not her too. Why was everyone so damn _loud_? “I want to sleep.”

“Wh-What do you think you're doing?!” the woman screamed but her outrage was pointedly ignored by both men.

His pillow was unceremoniously pulled out of his grasp and he let out another groan as Rao's light resumed its assault on his vision. “I will do no such thing,” the crotchety voice continued, somehow sounding even more annoyed than before if that was even possible. “You were supposed to have shown up for your lessons over an hour ago, Your Highness. As the one who was put in charge of conducting said lessons, it is my duty to ensure that you attend them so that I do not end up talking to an empty room.”

“Not like you wouldn't enjoy doing that anyway,” he muttered. “Fine, as your prince and only pupil, I'm exercising my authority and cancelling my lessons for the day. You are now free to do whatever old man thing you usually spend your free time doing like reading boring dusty tomes and- owowowowowow.”

The rest of Mon-El's sentence devolved into a series of pained exclamations as a gnarled hand grabbed him by the ear and tugged him to the side, causing him to tumble gracelessly out of bed and land with a thump on the floor. “I would vastly prefer having free time that has actually been earned where I do not have to fret about the future of Daxam and it potentially falling into ruin because its king is a lazy imbecile,” the voice grumbled. “Now get up, get dressed and follow me. You _will_ , I assure you, pay for not only wasting my time waiting for you to show up but also forcing me to come all the way to your chambers to fetch you as if you were an errant peasant child with half a brain.”

Stark naked and in pain from having been literally dragged out of bed, Mon-El still found it in himself to glare at the grey-haired man looming above him from his position on the floor. “Disrespecting and assaulting your prince in one go. I should have you publicly executed for this, Bal-Seg.”

As usual, Bal-Seg was unfazed by his threats which they both already knew were as empty as could be. “In order for you to do that, you would first have to put on some clothes and leave this room,” he replied smoothly. “And after that, you can at least spare an hour of your useless life listening to me lecture you one last time before you order my death. At least the etching on my grave will be able to accurately state that I died fulfilling my duty.”

“Fine, you walking relic!” Letting a litany of curses escape his lips, Mon-El grudgingly got to his feet and began trying to find some fresh clothes to put on. “Enough with the exaggerations already! At this point, I'm willing to do what you want just to stop you from prattling on for the next five minutes.”

“Whatever works,” the wizened man said with a satisfied expression on his face which vanished the moment he turned his green-eyed gaze on the woman who had been silently watching their exchange this whole time. “And _you_ ,” he snarled, his sharp tone causing her to flinch and shrink away, “had better retrieve your clothes and leave His Highness' quarters within the next minute or I will have the guards throw you out, dressed or not.”

“You... You can't do that!” she snapped at him indignantly. “Don't you know who I am?!”

Bal-Seg's glare intensified and the woman quailed, her bravado evaporating as quickly as it had manifested. “I neither know nor care,” he declared dismissively. “My first and only priority is His Highness and I will do whatever I believe is in line with that. The fragile feelings of an airheaded daughter of one of the noble houses are none of my concern. Now begone before I summon the guards.”

“You know,” Mon-El commented as he tugged on his pants once the sputtering woman had fled his chambers, “it's precisely this sort of behaviour that is the reason more than half the people in the royal court want you dead. Your refusal to show any of them the respect they want probably grates on their nerves to no end.”

“As if they would waste a drop of their precious wealth on hiring an assassin just to have a measly tutor killed,” Bal-Seg snorted derisively. “Those miserly fools are probably just waiting for me to drop dead of my own accord and save them some coin. On that note, are you quite done? If you take any longer, I really will die of old age at this rate.”

“Like that's ever going to happen within the next century,” Mon-El muttered more to himself than anything even though he was sure the room's only other occupant heard him regardless. “There, see? I'm fully clothed now and ready to suffer yet another one of your excruciatingly dull lessons. Lead the way.”

“If my lessons seem dull to you, it is only because you are a dullard,” Bal-Seg retorted as he walked out of the room with Mon-El in tow, his brown robes flapping about him and his ornate cane tapping out a steady rhythm on the floor with every step he took. “Perhaps if you applied that barely-used brain of yours every now and then, you would gain at least a sliver of the intellect required to process the information I so generously impart to you every day.”

“Insufferable senile coot,” Mon-El growled as he glared holes into the back of his tutor's head.

“Incorrigible spoiled brat,” Bal-Seg fired back without missing a beat or even turning around.

The exchange of insults, as always, caused Mon-El to grin slightly. Bal-Seg was the only person in his entire life who had treated him this way and he could not be more grateful for it. From the day they had met, the man had refused to let either Mon-El's status or his bratty behaviour as a child which had driven off every tutor who had preceded him influence the way he had treated the young prince. In fact, Bal-Seg had had the gall to punish Mon-El for every prank he had pulled and lesson he had skipped. It was, weirdly yet appropriately enough, a welcome experience in a world where everyone was either overly deferential for fear of being punished or disgustingly sycophantic in hopes of winning his favour. Not even Hal-Ed who had been his personal guard for nearly his entire adult life felt free enough to act in such a casual manner with him no matter how much Mon-El encouraged him to do so. (He wondered how it was possible to feel so alone despite being surrounded by so many people.)

...Which brought him back to his earlier observation about how his tutor had earned the ire of nearly every individual of note in the royal court.

“Always nice to see you using my gift,” he commented lightly as he eyed the cane in the old man's hand. “Sometimes I worry you'll just throw it away someday without my knowledge.”

“I only use it to keep you from nagging me ceaselessly about it,” Bal-Seg responded grumpily. “And do not tempt me, boy. This thing makes me feel old and that alone is reason enough to break it in two.”

“But you _are_ old,” Mon-El pointed out although his tone was slightly more serious than he initially intended. “You need it.”

Bal-Seg merely grunted. “So you say.”

By that point, they had reached the courtyard and Mon-El was forced to end the conversation there. Arguing in public about the cane where others could hear them would defeat the entire point of the item itself: a secret weapon, albeit a non-fatal one. Aside from his refusal to grovel at the feet of the nobles and their ilk, Bal-Seg had been attracting their unwanted attention by simply being a trusted figure in the eyes of the crown prince. It was a coveted position some believed would be theirs if they managed to get rid of the tutor and they were the kind that would resort to whatever means necessary to achieve their goal.

Worried for the old man's wellbeing, Mon-El had covertly commissioned a cane with a hidden mechanism which could inject a powerful and quick-acting paralytic agent into the target of choice. (A lethal poison was not an option. It would, after all, be a terrible idea to save Bal-Seg's life from an assassin only to have him sentenced to death for murder. Besides, dead assassins were understandably difficult to interrogate.)

As expected, the old man had reacted poorly to the 'gift' and it had taken a great deal of arguing before he had finally agreed to accept it. “Death will come for me one day,” he had said with a scowl, “and I highly doubt that this blasted thing will have done me any good in preventing it.”

A loud earth-shaking boom jarred Mon-El out of his reminiscing and he looked around in alarm as he tried to pinpoint the source of the commotion. “Are we under attack?!”

“Not unless you believe Krypton would sacrifice itself to win the war,” Bal-Seg answered grimly as he pointed at the sky. “Look.”

The moment he knew where to direct his gaze, Mon-El found himself at a loss for words as his brain struggled to comprehend what he was seeing.

Krypton was exploding. And the debris was raining down on Daxam.

The sensation of a knobbly hand gripping his arm dragged him out of his shock-induced stupor just as several more explosions rocked the royal palace. “Come, Your Highness,” Bal-Seg urged him as he began dragging him away. “We must get you to safety. Where is your personal shuttle?”

“In the...” Mon-El gulped as he mentally scrambled for the answer, “the east tower's private landing bay.”

“Then that is where we must go. And for Rao's sake, run! You should be ashamed that I am moving faster than you!” Bal-Seg scolded.

The journey there was a blur; all around them was nothing but death and destruction as chunks of Krypton both great and small continued to fall from the sky. Mon-El's feet moved as if of their own accord and the only thing that felt real was the iron grip on his arm that continued to pull him forward.

His people were dying and all he could do was run. What did that say about him?

By the time he was once again fully aware of his surroundings, they were already standing in front of their destination. It was only when he was in the midst of opening the door of the landing bay with his hand-print that he realised one glaring flaw in their plan: his personal shuttle was only large enough for one person. If he used it, where did that leave Bal-Seg?

The question ceased to become important the moment the door hissed open and he found himself looking at a prominent member of his father's court standing in front of the craft... and above the lifeless body of a familiar face.

“No...” he whispered in horror. “Hal-Ed...”

“Duke Lach,” Bal-Seg called out to the quaking figure who finally looked up at the sound of his name... and it was then that Mon-El spotted the gun in the duke's shaking hand. “Step away from His Highness' shuttle. Now.”

“N-No!” The other man turned his gun on them and Mon-El's blood froze in his veins. “I... I'm not going to die here! This ship is mine now!”

“I do not care if you live or die,” Bal-Seg responded flatly even as he positioned himself so that his body was between Mon-El and the weapon being pointed at them. “What matters is His Highness' life and your pathetic existence is worth nothing compared to his. Leave and find your own way off Daxam. Do not force my hand.”

“Bal-Seg, please,” Mon-El found himself begging as he reached out a hand to pull his tutor back out the door, “let's just go. My shuttle can't fit the both of us.”

The old man merely shrugged off the hand on his shoulder and ignored Mon-El's pleas. “Besides, Duke Lach, you can clearly see the royal crest on the shuttle. What exactly would people say when they find not the prince but you inside it? Give up this foolhardy plan of yours; it will not end well for you either way.”

“I don't care!” the duke screamed. “I'll tell them whatever story I like! Now stay back!”

“No,” Bal-Seg replied simply and stepped forward.

The sound of a gunshot echoed in the landing bay.

“BAL-SEG, NO!”

Time, in that moment, seemed to warp, both moving too quickly for him to comprehend and yet so slowly his brain recorded every single second. Rooted to the spot, all Mon-El could do was watch as his tutor moved towards the duke and descended upon him with seemingly unnatural speed and strength for someone of his age. There was a brief struggle as both men wrestled for the gun before Bal-Seg swung his cane at his opponent's head and the impact caused the duke to loosen his grip on the weapon. The sound of another gunshot rang out then and Duke Lach staggered back, his hand clutching his stomach and his face contorted in an expression that was a mixture of fear and shock.

The look on his face remained even after Bal-Seg fired another shot between his eyes and the duke's lifeless body crumpled to the ground next to Hal-Ed's corpse.

Jarred out of his stupor, Mon-El leapt forward just in time to catch Bal-Seg as the old man dropped the gun and stumbled backwards. “Bal-Seg! Bal-Seg, are you-”

His question became moot the moment he noticed the red blooming on his tutor's robes.

“I hate guns,” Bal-Seg muttered as if he was merely talking about an inconvenient spell of weather, pressing a hand to his chest in a half-hearted attempt to stem the blood flowing out of his gunshot wound.

No. No, this couldn't be happening. “Just... Just hang on,” Mon-El said shakily as he did his best to support Bal-Seg without jostling him. “You're not dying on me now, old man, you hear me? I order you as your prince. We're getting you out of here even if I have to-”

There was the sensation of a sharp prick somewhere on his leg and then it was Mon-El's turn to lose his balance. If not for the arm that had suddenly looped around his body, he would have fallen to the floor. “Wha...” He was slurring and his surroundings were suddenly spinning. What was happening to him?

“Stupid brat,” he heard Bal-Seg grumble as if from a distance and felt himself being dragged forward towards the shuttle. “I said that you are my one and only priority, didn't I? To force my hand like this... nothing but trouble from the first day I met you to the last. Although I suppose I should thank you for giving me that blasted stick now even though I didn't use it the way you intended.”

The cane. Of course. Mon-El tried to protest, to yell at his tutor to stop but all that came out of his mouth was unintelligible gurgling. _Don't do this_ , he wanted to say. _Save yourself. Please._

But the words would not come and he could only let himself be loaded into his personal shuttle like a child's doll and strapped in against his will. Even so, he struggled to make eye contact with Bal-Seg and tried to beg his tutor with his gaze. As if sensing he was being stared at, the old man looked up from his task of keying in the necessary commands into the shuttle's control panel.

Mon-El could not be sure, but it seemed like it was the first time he had ever seen Bal-Seg smile in all the years they had known each other.

“For what it's worth, I think you would have made a fine king,” Bal-Seg whispered, his words somehow audible despite the chaos that continued to rage outside and Mon-El's loosening grip on the waking world, “but above all else I hope you will become a fine man I would be proud to call my pupil.”

Then the shuttle sealed shut and Mon-El felt himself being carried away by his ship before the darkness finally claimed him.

 

* * *

 

“Damn you, old man,” Mon-El muttered under his breath. “I gave you that cane so that you could save your own life, not mine... Why did you have to be such a pain until the very end?”

“It can't be.”

The unexpected exclamation drew him out of his recollection and he looked up and to the left to find the Kryptonian girl staring at him disbelievingly from a short distance away. “This... this isn't possible,” she mumbled.

“Back so soon?” he asked with genuine curiosity. “Did you get lost or something?” Although now that he thought about it, hadn't she walked away from him in the opposite direction...?

“No! I... I was sure...” she replied incredulously, sounding entirely unsure of herself.

It was in that moment that he saw it: fear. The girl was genuinely afraid.

He frowned. While he hadn't actually believed the accusation he had thrown at her about her being part of some Kryptonian trap set out for him, he was now fully convinced that she was just as clueless about their situation as him... and whatever was going on, it was terrifying her. “Hey-” he started as he took a step towards her.

It turned out to be the wrong thing to do as her eyes widened and she stumbled in her haste to maintain the distance between them. “What... What do you think you're doing?!” she demanded, the outrage from before back in her voice.

The irritation he had felt during their first interaction made its return and he couldn't help but scowl. Even though he was fully aware that she was using anger to mask her fear, her attitude still grated on his nerves. “Just what are you trying to imply?” he asked indignantly. “I don't particularly care what kind of prejudices you have against Daxamites but suggesting that I would harm or, Rao forbid, violate a child, Kryptonian or not, is kind of extreme, don't you think?”

“I don't know what to think, okay?!” she screamed at him and he reeled back a little at the unexpected increase in volume. “Just leave me alone!”

Rendered temporarily speechless by her outburst, Mon-El could only watch as the girl all but ran away from him once again only to stop a good distance away, sit down on the grass, draw her legs up tight and bury her face in her knees. Well. Somehow that had turned out even worse than their first conversation. And this time he actually felt a little... bad, he supposed?

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose again, certain that he was getting a headache. His less than pleasant trip down memory lane had failed to yield any answers or even clues as to how he had arrived at this mysterious place and the presence of a certain girl who seemed to be the only other soul around was only compounding the issue. If this was all Rao's will, their god sure had a twisted sense of humour.

Intending to glare balefully at said girl for lack of anything else to do at the moment, Mon-El looked up in her direction...

...and found himself blinking in surprise. Was it just him or was her frame shaking?

He squinted and after a while confirmed that yes, her body was in fact trembling.

...Ah grife. She was crying, wasn't she?

A litany of curses escaped his lips. It was bad enough that he had no experience dealing with children but a _crying_ child? And a girl, no less? What in Rao's name was he supposed to do?

For a very brief moment, he considered ignoring her distress. After all, they didn't know each other and he had no obligation to care about her wellbeing. It would be vastly more productive if he spent his time trying to figure out a solution to his own predicament and he gained nothing from expending any effort – which would probably be wasted anyway, considering how she kept reacting to his presence – trying to make her feel better.

Mon-El squashed that impulse almost immediately. Spoiled, self-indulgent, lazy... he freely admitted that he was many things, but heartless was not one of them. And as for what he could do... well, being himself would just have to suffice.

Besides, he was pretty sure one of the main reasons she was crying right now was that she was feeling incredibly lonely after having likely lost everyone she cared about. He could sympathise with her there.

So he walked over to where she was sitting, plopped himself down next to her, lay flat on his back, tucked his interlaced hands under his head and closed his eyes as if he intended to sleep.

“H-Hey!” the girl exclaimed in outrage the moment she noticed his presence. “What do you think you're doing this time?!”

“What does it look like I'm doing?” he asked even as he kept his eyes closed. Good. At least that had put a stop to her crying. For now, anyway. “I'm trying to sleep. Now shush.”

“Y-You...!” she sputtered. “Can't you find somewhere else to do that?! Why did you have to come all the way to where I was sitting to sleep?!”

He shrugged casually. “This seemed like the most comfortable place and hey, guess what? It is. Can you be quiet now?”

“No! And how can you even tell if this spot is more comfortable than literally everywhere else in this field?! Just... find somewhere else! Also, I was here first!”

Instead of replying to her directly, he let out an obnoxiously loud snore.

More indignant sputtering. If he was being honest with himself, he was actually kind of enjoying riling her up like this. “You can't seriously be asleep already, you... you... idiot! Wake up!” he heard her yell at him and then felt two small hands futilely shove the left side of his torso either in an attempt to rouse him or push him away.

He snored again and fought the urge to grin.

This time, the sputtering sounded dangerously close to becoming actual swear words. He felt quite proud of himself. “W-Well, fine then! I'm leaving! And don't you dare consider this as a win for you!”

Except she didn't leave, judging by the lack of any sound of movement to his left. And she didn't resume crying either.

In a weird way, he supposed that counted as progress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter certainly ran on for longer than I intended... I was aiming for a rather standard length for all the chapters but the flashback ended up being quite extensive so... well, that happened. Please don't expect all future chapters to be this long though. >.<  
> On a related note, this has got to be one of the shortest intervals between uploads from me and I'm pretty sure no one's more surprised than me. I'll try to keep up this writing/posting pace but just be forewarned that real life hates me and could get in the way of that.  
> Anyway, thanks to all of you who've expressed interest in seeing how this develops! Hope you enjoyed this chapter and look forward to the next one! (And yes, continue ensuring I'm tied to the mast... with those chains if you feel like using them.)


	3. Truce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara and Mon-El try to have a conversation that doesn't involve any yelling or insults. (Emphasis on 'try'.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned that I love writing Karamel bickering? Because I do. And I hope you like reading it. If you do, enjoy!

She could do it. In fact, she _should_ do it. Just get up right this second and leave to find somewhere else to sit where there were no irritating Daxamite princes lying around nearby. She'd told him she'd do it after all.

...And yet she continued to sit at the exact same spot she'd sat down on Rao knew how long ago while he lay right there within arm's reach.

She hadn't even tried to scoot away from him even just a little.

 _Just do it, Kara_ , she told herself sternly. _Get on your feet and find a new spot. Whatever it takes to get away from him._

 _-Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to get away from him-_ , a very reasonable-sounding voice at the back of her head piped up out of the blue, _-but where exactly do you plan to go?-_

Caught by surprise, Kara took a moment to formulate a response... to herself, apparently. (The pause was also spent wondering if she was already starting to go insane considering it sounded like her own brain was arguing in favour of staying right where she was instead of leaving.) _Just... somewhere else. Anywhere he's not nearby._

 _-What would that solve though?-_ , the voice asked. _-He'll still be the only other person around and you already know you can't actually get that far away from him.-_

 _At least he won't be right next to me reminding me that he's there!_ she pointed out angrily.

_-What's so wrong about that?-_

The question threw her for a loop. _What do you mean, 'what's so wrong about that'?! It's... him! A Daxamite! And not just any Daxamite! The crown prince!_

 _-But he's still 'someone'-_ , the voice noted. _-Up until a short while ago, you were feeling so alone. Now you're not.-_

 _I'm not feeling so alone that I'd be willing to... to... tolerate him!_ she raged.

_-Aren't you?-_

She had nothing to say to that.

Because it was true, as much as she hated to admit it. Even to herself.

After she'd run away from him earlier, it had not taken long for her to recall the fact that she really had nowhere to run _to_ – 'away' was not exactly an option as proven by her earlier attempt – and that realisation had robbed her of her energy to move. Of course, the moment she'd stopped in her tracks was when the full weight of everything she had experienced in such a short time – not to mention what she was currently going through – finally caught up with her and she had found herself unable to do anything but sit down and cry her eyes out.

Then he'd decided to lie down next to her. And she'd been so infuriated first by the audacity of him choosing to _sleep_ near her of all things and then by his unwillingness to just _move_ that she'd momentarily forgotten about her loneliness. Instead of crying, she'd focused all of her energy on yelling at him and trying to make him go away.

And now... now here they were: him lying there pretending to sleep – she was very sure he was just pretending because he'd conveniently stopped snoring the moment she'd stopped saying or doing anything to rid herself of him – and her sitting next to him glowering at his stupid face.

They made quite a pair.

_-You should try talking to him.-_

...Okay, now she was really sure she was going insane.

_Why would I want to do that?! And even if I did, there's nothing we could possibly talk about!_

_-It's not like you have anything else to do.-_

That... was another very painful truth. Leaving was impossible, moving was pointless and the only thing she seemed capable of doing right now was... glare at him. And that wasn't exactly getting her anywhere. Plus, it wasn't as if she _liked_ staring at him.

 _...Fine_ , Kara mentally grumbled. Maybe it was a good idea anyway; after all, it was possible that he knew something about their situation that she didn't and that could prove useful. Not that she actually expected much from him, considering everything... but it was worth a try.

“Hey,” she started in as even a tone as she could manage and then lapsed into silence for a beat as she tried to think of a way to start a conversation that could somehow lead to a discussion about their current situation. When nothing came to mind, she decided to go with the safest thing she felt she could ask at the moment. “...You're not really asleep, are you?”

On cue, one of his eyes cracked open and met her gaze. “Well, would you look at that,” he drawled. “So you _are_ actually capable of talking to me without raising your voice or being rude.”

Oh, how she regretted opening her mouth and trying to be polite now. “Of course I'm capable of it!” she shouted. “It's just that you're such a... a... _jerk_ that not being angry at you is impossible!”

“And we're back where we started,” he sighed and closed his eye again. “Yelling and throwing unwarranted insults again.”

“How was that unwarranted?!” she demanded to know. “I tried to ask a perfectly normal question and your response was just... uncalled for! And you say _I'm_ the rude one?!”

His one eye cracked open again to regard her carefully. “Well, you started it. I'm just... balancing things out a little.”

She sputtered disbelievingly. “Are you... Are you seriously _keeping score_?!”

He opened his other eye and flashed her an impish grin. “Not particularly, no. But if you want me to...”

“Of course I don't-” she began to protest only for him to cut her off.

“Oh, you want to maintain your head start instead?” he asked in a mock affronted tone. “So much for that legendary Kryptonian dedication to fairness and all that.”

“You... You... Stop twisting my words!” she raged, barely resisting the urge to beat her now curled fists on his chest. “I'm trying to have a conversation with you and you're just being difficult on purpose!”

“Is _that_ what you were trying to do?” he asked, a bemused smile playing on his lips. “I couldn't tell since I was so distracted by the fact that you could actually talk normally.”

Glowering at him, Kara quietly wished she'd just followed her original plan to find somewhere else to sit instead of listening to the stupid voice in her head and staying to try and talk to him. “Forget it,” she muttered, beyond annoyed with Daxamites in general instead of just the one before her. “I shouldn't have tried.”

“Okay, okay,” he said as he rolled over to face her, propped himself up on his elbow and gave her a slightly apologetic expression. “No more teasing. For now, at least.”

“For- What do you mean, 'for now'?!” she asked incredulously.

“Well, if you keep yelling at me like you're doing right now, I'll keep teasing you,” he responded simply, his eyes positively twinkling with mischief. It was aggravating, to say the least. “Same goes with the insults. So if you don't yell at or insult me, I won't tease you. How does that sound?”

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from responding in exactly that fashion. “Fine,” she muttered reluctantly. _You can do it_ , she told herself. _You can be civil. You're a Kryptonian and he's a Daxamite. This should be easier for you compared to him._

He grinned at her. “See? We're off to a good start already.”

It sure didn't feel like that to her but she kept her mouth shut.

“All right,” he continued, seemingly oblivious to her true feelings on the matter, “how about we talk about something important now that we've established that we can be civil to one another?”

“...Like our situation?” she asked tentatively, a little surprised that despite the unpleasant detour, she'd still managed to achieve her original goal in the end.

He nodded as the grin on his face was replaced with a surprisingly serious expression. “Exactly. We'll start at the beginning. I'm assuming that you woke up in this place without any clue how you got here the same way I did?”

She nodded, content for the moment with letting him do all the talking.

“Right.” He paused for a moment as if contemplating something before he started speaking again. “Well, I think the biggest mystery right now is how you ended up walking away from me in one direction only to come back from the opposite direction. Are you sure you didn't just get hopelessly lost?” he asked her with a seemingly sceptical look on his face.

“Hey! If I don't get to insult you, you don't get to insult me either!” she shot back angrily. “I walked away from you in a straight line, okay?! I didn't even turn the slightest bit!”

“Okay, okay, I believe you,” he said as he held up a hand in surrender. “I just wanted to confirm it with you. Although...”

She eyed him warily. “Although what?”

The look he gave her was unexpectedly analytical in nature. “Let's run a little experiment. I'm going to see if I get the same results.” He got to his feet. “Stay right here.”

“I don't have to listen to you... and I wasn't planning on following you anyway,” she muttered as she watched him slowly walk away.

Even so, a tiny seed of fear took root in her chest and began growing. What if he didn't come back? What if he managed to escape this strange situation they were in unlike her?

Then she'd be alone again.

Suddenly anxious, she kept her eyes trained on his slowly shrinking form as he got further and further away.

When she blinked, he vanished.

 _No._ Fear transformed into full-blown panic as she stared in shock at the empty space where she'd last seen him. He couldn't just have disappeared, right? He couldn't just leave her-

“Well that was interesting.”

Kara jumped out of her skin and a sharp scream escaped her lips as she turned her head around to find him walking right up to her. “Don't do that!” she scolded him as she pressed a hand to her chest in a futile attempt to calm her racing heart. “You gave me a fright!”

He blinked. “Sorry,” he said and his apology actually sounded sincere. “I thought you heard me coming.”

“It's...” She swallowed. “It's fine. You didn't mean to do it. ...Right?”

“I didn't,” he assured her and seemed to wait for her to regain her composure before he spoke up again. “You were watching me leave, correct?” When she nodded hesitantly, he hummed thoughtfully. “What did you observe?”

Secretly glad he was taking an empirical approach to their situation and had not decided to tease her about being so easily frightened, she answered to the best of her abilities. “You were about this tall-” she indicated by holding up a hand and spreading apart her thumb and index finger, “-from my perspective when I blinked and you just... vanished.”

He let out another pensive hum. “I see. Okay, let's try doing this again but with one small change. I'm going to walk away backwards this time and we're going to maintain eye contact for as long as possible. Maybe the results will be different.”

“Try not to fall down,” she found herself blurting out to her own surprise as he began his backwards journey.

“Wow, is that genuine concern I hear in your voice?” he teased her, a grin once again adorning his face.

She flushed as she stammered out a reply. “I-I-I was just concerned about the data we're trying to gather, not you!”

“Whatever you say,” he laughed and she was sure that his eyes were twinkling even though he was too far away now for her to confirm it. (Even as she fumed at his endless jokes – which were almost always at her expense –, she found herself wondering how he could remain so... _cheerful_ despite their circumstances.)

When she blinked and saw that he'd disappeared once again, she wasted no time swivelling her head and found him in the process of turning around to face her once again.

“Another failure,” he commented with a sigh and a shake of his head once he'd made his way back to her. “I'm guessing you blinked again?” When she nodded, he let out another sigh. “I did too.”

“I guess we really are stuck with each other,” Kara replied somewhat despondently even as she secretly felt relieved that he'd returned as it meant that she would not be alone. As annoying as it was, he and his questionable sense of humour kept her mind occupied and prevented her from dwelling on her situation.

...Now that she thought about it, was it possible that he was doing it on purpose?

“So I have a proposition for you,” he said out of the blue as he lay back down on almost exactly the same spot as before and the question that had just entered her mind slipped away as quickly as it had manifested.

“...What kind of proposition?” she asked cautiously as her mind generated a hundred different possibilities.

He shrugged but the look he gave her was a measured one. “A truce.”

...Okay, she had not been expecting _that_. “W-What?”

“Look, it's just the two of us here – wherever here is for that matter – and we're stuck together in a situation that for the moment seems to be impossible to understand. Our titles and pasts mean nothing in our current circumstances. Right now, we're just... a boy from Daxam and a girl from Krypton, working together to figure all this-” he waved a hand around vaguely, a gesture she took to mean he was referring to their situation, “-out.”

“Aren't you a little old to be referring to yourself as a boy?” she asked sceptically.

“You wound me,” he replied with a look of mock hurt as he pressed a hand to the right side of his chest, indirectly confirming what she'd once heard about Daxamites' hearts being on the right instead of the left side of their chests. “It's my age here-” he tapped his chest right above where his heart apparently was, “-that matters.”

“That just means you're immature,” she responded flatly.

“Hey now, I thought we agreed there'd be no more insults?” he reminded her with a bemused grin on his face.

She stiffened and drew a deep breath before answering. “I'm sorry,” she managed to say somewhat sincerely.

“Good. You should be,” he replied but gave her a wink just to tell her that he meant it in jest.

The glare she sent his way felt perfectly justified but even as she bristled at his teasing, she couldn't help but re-evaluate her initial perception of him... and her own actions.

 _He's not a bad person, Kara_ , she told herself. _You can do it._

“I'm sorry,” she repeated and it was clear that her apology had caught him off guard.

“For what?” he asked with genuine confusion which lasted for a beat before that familiar twinkle was back in his eyes. “Because I'm afraid I have to tell you that the list of things that you should be sorry for is... well, it's long.”

“Shut up, I'm trying to be serious here,” she complained and waited for him to stop grinning before she continued. “I just...” She fidgeted and dropped her gaze for a second before regaining her resolve and looking him in the eye once again. “I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for... for being rude to you. Starting from the moment you introduced yourself. And the unfounded accusations I threw at you. I behaved atrociously and you didn't deserve it. So... um, sorry.”

He eyed her with a mixture of surprise and what looked a little like respect. “Apology accepted,” he finally said after a short pause.

His words lifted a weight off her shoulders and she allowed herself a small smile before she dropped it in favour of looking meaningfully at him.

“...What?” he asked, clearly perplexed by her behaviour.

“You weren't exactly very polite when you talked to me at the start either,” she pointed out.

One of his eyebrows arched. “...Because you were being rude to me.”

She couldn't help but pout a little. “And I apologised for that.”

Realisation dawned on his face. “Ah. So you want an apology from me?”

“Well, it would be nice...” she trailed off.

“Okay, okay, if you insist,” he sighed. “I'm sorry...”

She smiled. “I for-”

“...that you're such a gullible Kryptonian brat,” he finished and flashed her a cheeky grin.

The smile fell off her face and she openly gaped at him in shock. Meanwhile, he saw the opportunity for what it was, leapt to his feet and began running away from her.

His actions drew her out of her stupor and her expression darkened as she got up and gave chase. “Get back here, you... you... _stupid Daxamite jerk_!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed to get this out within a week of the previous chapter being posted despite real life trying to sabotage my efforts so yay me! I'm going to try and maintain this pace from now on (except maybe between arcs); wish me luck.
> 
> Anyway, our space puppies have taken their first tentative step towards being nice to each other. (Kind of anyway, lol.) Let's give them a round of applause, people! =D


	4. Mourning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new truce is called, memories are shared and someone learns to approach the same situation in a different way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this is one of the chapters I'm kind of sure justifies my use of the angst tag. Um, enjoy?

As it turned out, being unable to get away from someone was not really an issue when one's goal was not to actually escape but instead simply stay just beyond the reach of one's pursuer.

It also helped when one's pursuer had much shorter legs and a lot less stamina.

(Interestingly enough, he noted that he had not broken out in a sweat despite their little 'exercise session'. There was the shortness of breath, the increase in heart rate and the burning sensation in his leg muscles but no perspiration. One glance at her confirmed that the same applied to her as well. He mentally filed the information away as yet another oddity to be studied later although he supposed it was a blessing considering he doubted they would be able to find a way to freshen up in this place, much less another set of clothes they could change into.)

“I'd like to propose a new truce,” Mon-El said with a grin on his face as he stood a safe distance away.

At his words, the Kryptonian girl who had had her head down and her hands resting on her knees as she struggled to catch her breath looked up and glared at him. “You have some nerve... who exactly was it who broke the old one in the first place?” she asked angrily, her brilliant blue eyes shining with rage.

“Well,” he drawled, “if you want to be pedantic, I didn't actually break it. I only agreed not to tease you if you didn't yell at or insult me. Pointing out that you're gullible doesn't technically count as teasing since it's true. I mean, you were so quick to believe I'd apologise that you didn't even consider that I might not say what you were expecting. As for the brat part, you _are_ a child and you only just recently started behaving a little better so...”

The glare intensified and he was sure that if looks could kill, he would be a corpse by now. “You're actually _excusing_ your conduct?!”

His grin widened. This was just so much fun he wasn't sure he could stop even if he wanted to do so. “Maybe? I _am_ a Daxamite, after all.”

“That really doesn't help me change my opinion of your race, much less you,” she pointed out bitterly.

“True,” he agreed readily. “Okay, this time I'm sincerely apologising for calling you a gullible Kryptonian brat-”

“You didn't have to repeat it,” she grumbled.

“-and in the name of justice, I would like to offer you the chance to even things out in whatever way you choose. Maybe you can kick me in the shins or something along those lines,” he finished and then watched, fascinated, as a slew of emotions flitted across her face. Oh, she really was tempted, wasn't she?

Eventually, however, she straightened and took a deep breath in a clear attempt to regain her composure before speaking. “I graciously decline your offer,” she said stiffly. “But if you are being serious about honouring this new truce, I am... open to that.” She shot him another glare. “Provided you actually stick to it this time and don't find some way to bend the rules again.”

So she'd chosen to take the high road... minus that little jab at the end, that is. Although if he was being fair, he'd kind of deserved that one. He didn't know if he was supposed to be impressed due to how young she was or unsurprised considering her willingness to apologise for her earlier conduct unprompted. It almost made him question whether she really was a Kryptonian.

“Okay, but let's go for a less... hmm... binding one this time,” Mon-El suggested and grinned again when her glare returned. “What? Don't you think it's better if we give ourselves a little leeway here? Because I'm being honest with you when I say I'm pretty sure neither of us are actually going to be able to completely stop ourselves from throwing verbal barbs at each other forever. Wouldn't you agree?”

She kept glaring at him but her silence was answer enough.

“I'll take that as a 'yes' then,” he said with a smirk. “This is a good thing, you know. If we allow ourselves a little room to... shall we say... _exercise our seemingly natural tendencies_ every now and then instead of keeping everything inside until we explode, we'll probably be a lot less angry at each other. In a manner of speaking anyway.”

“Somehow I get the feeling I'm always going to be at least a little angry at you,” she muttered. “But fine. I agree to these terms.”

“Excellent!” He clapped his hands and did his best to temper the grin on his face for her sake. “Now let's settle something we should've resolved the moment we established that we could actually have a semi-normal conversation which is actually addressing each other by name. I mean, unless you want us to keep addressing each other as 'brat' and 'jerk' respectively-”

“You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?”

He paused mid-sentence and regarded her with one eyebrow raised. “Doing what on purpose?”

“The endless teasing,” she clarified as she stared at him so intensely it was almost as if she was daring him to deny it. “You're just trying to distract me from thinking too much about our situation.”

Huh. Interesting. “And what makes you think that?” he asked carefully.

“You started seeking me out to bother me after our second conversation-”

“Yelling match would be more accurate,” he interjected and held his hands up in surrender when she shot him a glare for interrupting her.

“-after our second _conversation_ ,” she stressed the word as she continued, “and ever since then you haven't really left me alone. Even when we were trying to figure out our situation, you diverted the discussion away from what should have been the first thing we talked about and instead focused on our inability to get away from each other.”

Mon-El couldn't help but be impressed. Perhaps he'd underestimated her intelligence just a little; he hadn't expected her to pick up on his actions and their underlying motives that quickly. “I'm sorry,” he apologised sincerely as he let his grin fade into what he hoped was a more fitting expression. “I didn't want to bring it up until I was sure you were ready to talk about it.”

It was kind of weak as far as excuses went – or so he felt – but there had seemed to be no easy way to ask someone about the destruction of their entire world when the event was probably still so fresh in their mind. Maybe it was a cowardly way to approach the matter... but then again, he had never claimed to be brave.

Having received the confirmation she had desired, the girl's gaze lost its intensity and turned sorrowful for a moment before she hugged herself and tried to look resolute. “It's... It's okay,” she said after an understandably long pause. “I'm... okay. I'm ready to talk about it now. You don't have to keep distracting me. And thank you. I think.”

Smart _and_ brave. It felt like this girl was never going to stop surprising him. “You're welcome, I guess,” he replied before offering her a slightly mischievous smile. “Are you sure though? Because I wouldn't mind continuing for a little longer.”

There was that glare again. “I know now that you're just teasing me for my sake however insane that sounds but can you not enjoy doing it quite so much?” she complained.

“Sorry, I don't think that's possible,” he responded cheekily. “Your reactions are just too fun to observe.”

He distinctly heard the girl mutter a few choice words under her breath at that. “Can we just talk about what we should be talking about already?” she said out loud. “At this point, I'd rather do that than subject myself to any more of your teasing.”

“Whenever you think you're ready,” he answered as gently as he could, softening his smile in the process; the time for jokes was over for now and he had to be serious. As limited as his conversational skills were when it came to dealing with matters like these, he at least knew that he didn't want to come across like he was being insensitive to her suffering.

On Daxam, these things had not been much of an issue thanks to the drugs that had been readily available to anyone with the money to afford them but it wasn't like he had any to fall back on right now. Besides, it felt... wrong... to even consider numbing his feelings when he could clearly see how the girl before him was valiantly trying to deal with her emotions on her own, painful as they were. If she could do it, he could at least give it a try.

For one fleeting moment, Mon-El let himself wonder if Bal-Seg would be proud of him for something this small. The old man had mostly kept his opinions about the drugs that had flowed freely in their society to himself but his disapproval had been clear in the sharpness of his gaze whenever he spotted some of them in Mon-El's possession.

“Of course it would take a girl to get you to rethink that despicable habit of yours,” he could practically hear his tutor grumble.

It almost made him laugh. Almost.

He shook away that particular ghost and refocused his attention on the girl in question who had squared her shoulders while he had been lost in his thoughts and was currently looking at him with grim resolve. “I have to be able to talk about it eventually, right?” she asked rhetorically. “And what I know might help us figure out our current situation, so.”

“All right then,” he said softly. “Come on, let's sit down; no reason to stand around like a couple of statues for this.” He approached her – carefully, on the off chance that he spooked her like before – and sat down next to her, all the while making sure that he was neither too close nor too far and that she seemed as comfortable as she could possibly be considering the circumstances. “What do you remember?”

“Krypton... Krypton was dying,” she started shakily as she stared ahead at nothing in particular over her knees. “My uncle and aunt put their son – my baby cousin – Kal-El into a pod and set the coordinates for a planet called Earth to save his life. My parents put me in another pod and I was supposed to follow him there. Except...”

“...you ended up here,” he finished and continued to eye her carefully after she nodded. “I'm guessing he's nowhere to be found in this place?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed quietly and hugged her knees just a little tighter. “He doesn't seem to be here. I... I don't know where he is.”

Mon-El briefly considered making a quip about how that was a relief since he already had his hands full dealing with her and adding a baby to his list of responsibilities would be too much but then thought better of it. “I'm sure he's fine,” he murmured instead.

“I told my father I wasn't afraid,” she whispered as if he hadn't said anything. “I didn't... I didn't think I was lying to him when I said it but...”

“Hey.” He waited for her to meet his gaze before he spoke again. “There's nothing wrong with being scared, you know. You're just a child. Besides, I'd say you've been pretty brave so far considering everything.”

The shine of her blue orbs indicated she was dangerously close to crying again but she seemed to be holding back her tears through sheer force of will. “...You think so?”

“Mhm.” He waited until she looked like she'd mostly regained control of herself before he felt it was safe to get her talking again. “What happened after your pod left Krypton?”

She looked away from him and closed her eyes. He couldn't tell if she was doing it because she was trying to concentrate or because the memory was just that painful. “I... I'm not really sure. I think... when Krypton exploded, it sent out a shock wave which affected my pod's trajectory. There was...” She swallowed and her hands curled into fists. “There was a-a lot of... of debris just f-flying around which... which hit my pod a-and-”

The way her body jerked and her eyes flew open to stare at him with fear shining in them made him rethink his impulsive decision to touch her shoulder in a half-desperate effort to calm her. Then again, he had been unable to think of any other way to prevent what he was sure had been the beginning of a panic attack. “It's okay. You're okay,” he whispered and hoped he was doing this right. “You're not in that pod right now. For better or worse. So just... breathe, okay?”

She didn't look like she believed him but closed her eyes again and drew in one lungful of air after another all the same as if she had been drowning. Meanwhile, he kept his hand on her shoulder until he felt her stop trembling. “...Thank you,” she whispered once her breathing had mostly returned to normal and she looked up at him gratefully.

“It's nothing,” he shrugged and retracted his hand. “Anything else you remember?”

“Nothing else that might help,” she said after a pause as she went back to staring at some unspecified point in the distance. “Just... my, um... things my mother told me before I got into my pod.”

Mon-El kept quiet, hoping she understood that he didn't want to prod her into saying anything she didn't want to say.

“She said I would be asleep for most of the trip and she'd be with me in my dreams,” she confessed hesitantly as if she wasn't sure if she wanted to share this particular memory with him. “She told me that because of Earth's yellow sun, I would have powers. I think she meant for me to use them to keep Kal-El and myself safe and I promised I wouldn't fail either him or her. I guess...” she trailed off. “I guess I lied to her too.”

“Does it actually count though?” he asked as he scratched his jaw – a nervous habit he had never been able to break despite his many attempts to do so throughout his life. To say that he was out of his element right now was an understatement. In fact, he was pretty sure he'd passed that point a long time ago. “I mean, it's not like you wanted to end up here. Besides, who's to say we won't be able to escape our current situation, find your cousin and make sure the both of you reach Earth in the end? So... technically speaking, you didn't lie and you haven't broken your promise.”

She stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and exasperation. “Are you actually arguing semantics with me?”

“I guess?” He let out an awkward chuckle and looked away. “Why, am I winning?”

“...I'm not obligated to answer that, am I?” she finally asked after the silence had dragged on for a while.

“I think that's a 'yes',” he responded cheekily, secretly glad that he'd succeeded in preventing her mind from going down a dark path yet again. “But I'll let it go this time.”

“Can I... ask you something?”

Caught off guard by the unexpected question, Mon-El turned his head to look at her while hoping his surprise wasn't too evident on his face. “Um, sure. What is it?”

There was a moment where she looked like she was rethinking what she was about to say but then she drew a fortifying breath and barrelled on. “When I first introduced myself, you sounded like you knew my family. D-Did you? Know any of them, I mean.”

Ah. So she remembered that, did she? “Kind of, I guess,” he answered. “Krypton occasionally sent over representatives whenever the situation demanded it and they were usually from the house of El. I thought I'd seen the crest on your shirt somewhere before and then you shared your name; that was when I realised why it looked so familiar. Your mother's name is Alura, isn't it?”

“Y-Yes,” she stuttered in surprise, her blue eyes wide in disbelief as she stared at him. “You knew her?”

He shrugged. “Only in passing. I never spoke to her directly.” At her curious expression, he sighed and continued. “There was this time a Skaardvarian decided it was a brilliant idea to steal from one of Daxam's noble houses and our forces gave chase when he fled our planet. He ended up crash-landing on Krypton and damaging some buildings there. There was a big argument between our planets as to who had the 'right' to punish him and your mother was the judicator who'd been chosen to represent your side's justice system in the proceedings that followed.”

“What was she like?” she asked, her voice quiet but eager.

Mon-El turned away and hummed in an attempt to stall for time as he tried to think of a way to answer her question without upsetting her. The 'discussions' had been... ugly, to say the least. There had been so much contempt and disdain coming from both parties that he had always found himself expecting a fight to start at any moment. As for Alura... well.

“She was... eloquent,” he finally stated. It was the most neutral way he could have described the woman's shrewdness. “Knew almost exactly what to say at every turn. I'm almost certain she'd somehow managed to learn Daxam's laws considering how well she countered the arguments put forth by the representatives of our side. It was clear to me why she'd been selected.”

“I see...” She stared off into the distance again. “I wish I could've seen her work at least once.”

 _No, you don't_ , he thought but didn't say out loud. He knew what it was like to think the world of your parents only to have that illusion torn to shreds before your very eyes. This girl was too... _soft_ ; the ruthless way Alura had carried out her duties – he didn't doubt that she had been no different on Krypton – would likely have destroyed the way she was viewed by her daughter forever.

Eager to get rid of the dark atmosphere which had blanketed them as a result of their less than cheerful conversation, Mon-El turned to face the girl with a joke on his lips-

-and stopped himself when he noticed she was blinking away more tears.

He considered blurting out his joke anyway just to distract her like he had been doing all this while. It was the best way he could think of to stop her from crying. Furthermore, their past interactions had proved that it always worked.

But then he wondered if he was dealing with the situation the right way. If this wasn't just a different means of numbing one's feelings instead of dealing with them directly.

So he made a decision and prayed to Rao that it was the right one.

“You can cry if you want to,” he said softly, earning himself a look of shock from her which he was almost sure mirrored the expression on his own face. “I won't try to distract you this time, I promise.”

“...Why?” she asked tremulously, and he couldn't tell if she was dismayed or grateful.

“You need to mourn,” he answered simply, hoping for her sake that he wasn't going to regret this later. “Burying those feelings will only make it hurt even more. I think. This is... new to me so... don't take my word for it.”

She sniffled. “You're terrible at comforting people, you know.”

A small grin tugged at his lips. “Really? I couldn't tell.”

Then he said no more and pretended he couldn't see her tears or hear her sobs... but if he happened to shift a little closer to her so she could feel his presence at her side, neither of them drew any attention to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, writing Mon-El being a smartass is much easier compared to writing from his perspective as he's doing his best to learn when to tell a joke and when to say something comforting... which he has zero experience doing in the first place. Hope I did him justice.
> 
> Also, feel free to hug Kara; she needs it. >_>


	5. Regrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Mon-El's turn to tell his story and Kara begins to realise that there's a lot more to the Daxamite prince than she initially thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (prepares a box of tissues) I'm just... going to leave this here in case any of you need it...

It wasn't as if she'd been waiting for his permission or anything like that. After all, she'd basically started on what had promised to be quite the crying fit earlier before he'd begun his little quest to keep her distracted so she wouldn't cry. The tears were there, just waiting to be shed, but they had been held at bay by her own desire to present a strong front – to him, to the world but maybe most of all to herself – as well as the teasing he had directed her way.

But then he had looked at her, his own eyes surprisingly full of an awkward yet earnest kind of understanding, and gently told her that she was allowed to cry. That she _needed_ to cry.

Somehow, his clumsily careful words had struck a chord in her... and that was when the dam broke.

So Kara cried.

She cried over the death of her father, the kindest and most intelligent man she knew.

She cried over the death of her mother, the woman she saw as everything she wanted to be when she grew up.

She cried over the deaths of her aunt and uncle, who would never be able to watch their only son grow up.

She cried over the loss of her home – of the house she had grown up in and her planet of birth.

She cried over the loss of her race – the people she had never met, the friends she could no longer make, the peers she would never be able to work alongside as an adult.

She cried over the loss of the life she knew – the life that she could have had but one that had now been denied to her forever.

She cried over the painful past behind her, the uncertain present around her and the unknown future before her.

She cried over the injustice of it all.

And throughout everything – every bitter tear and every wretched sob –, he was a warm and solid yet silent presence at her side.

Kara found it hard to be sure through the ocean of grief that was drowning her but she thought she might be... grateful.

Finally, after Rao knew how long, the tears began to subside and the sobs began to quieten. Her eyes were puffy and her throat felt like she'd swallowed a mouthful of sand but aside from that, she strangely felt... better. Even if just a little.

It was something. It was a start.

Once she was sure that she had regained control of her emotions to some extent, she lifted her head to look up and to her side to find him deliberately staring off into the distance and not at her. It was, she supposed, a sincere attempt to give her some semblance of privacy despite the fact that he was sitting right next to her... and slightly closer than initially at that. (She wasn't going to complain. Just this once. Or so she told herself.) He seemed to sense her gaze almost immediately, however, because it did not take long for him to turn his head and train those blue-grey orbs on her.

“I, uh...” he started and then trailed off before glancing down at his lap. “I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to say right now,” he confessed, sounding strangely guilty and somewhat lost. “Nothing that comes to mind sounds right.”

She kept quiet, not trusting herself to speak just yet.

He scratched his jaw while pointedly looking away from her as he continued talking. “Asking you if you're all right is pointless since... well, you're clearly not all right and I get the feeling that asking if you're feeling better will just make you feel worse so... yeah.”

“...You really are absolutely terrible at comforting people,” she finally managed to say despite the hoarseness of her voice.

A laugh escaped him. “Can't argue with that,” he replied, a hint of his familiar grin twisting his lips. “But you _do_ realise that if you expect me to improve, you're going to have to actually give some constructive criticism, right? Or maybe even some suggestions? Because otherwise it's just an insult and that would kind of violate our truce.”

“If I remember correctly, the new truce gives both of us some leeway,” she countered, the corners of her own lips twitching against her will. “Besides, I was just stating a fact.”

His grin widened. “Using my own arguments against me, huh? I feel like I have to concede defeat just because of that.”

“I am, by the way,” she said out of the blue, startling him somewhat in the process. “Feeling better. A little.”

The smile he offered her this time was gentle and careful. “That's good to hear.”

“Thank you,” she mumbled as she ducked her head so her face was half-hidden behind the little wall she had created by wrapping her arms around her knees. There was no apparent reason to feel self-conscious – especially not in light of everything she'd done prior to this – but that didn't stop the inexplicable bout of shyness that had suddenly overtaken her.

If he noticed her sudden change of mood, he didn't show it. “I didn't do anything,” he responded with a shrug that seemed casual on the surface... except he was scratching his jaw again and wouldn't look her in the eyes. The action was a giveaway as to his true feelings, she was almost sure of it. “All I did was sit here.”

Kara didn't know how to tell him that his mere presence helped or why that was the case so she kept those thoughts to herself. Eager to change topics before she said something potentially embarrassing, she mentally scrambled for something else to talk about. “S-So, um,” she stuttered, “what about you? What do you remember before you woke up here?”

The moment the last word left her lips, his entire body froze and she got the sense that she'd chosen the worst possible topic to bring up. She wanted to kick herself for it.

“Ah.” He turned his head to the side and the hand that had been scratching his jaw came to rest on the ground. “So we're at that stage of our little discussion, huh.”

“You don't have to tell me if you don't want to,” she said hurriedly, finding herself somewhat desperate to banish the dark look on his face. Why oh why did she have to open her big mouth and ask _that_ question of all things?

“No,” he sighed as he closed his eyes and brought his hand up to his face again so he could pinch the bridge of his nose. “You told me your story so I should tell you mine. It's only fair.”

“This has nothing to do with what's fair or not,” she found herself arguing softly. “You didn't push me to talk about my experience and waited for me to bring it up myself. I should return the favour. I... I _want_ to. You deserve that much.”

“What I know might help us figure out our situation though,” he pointed out, repeating her own words from earlier almost verbatim no less.

“It can wait,” she said in as firm a voice as she was able to muster. It was true, as far as she could tell; time didn't seem to have much of a presence here, wherever they were. She couldn't exactly be sure how long it had been since she'd first woken up but the fact that the sun shining down on them had seemingly not moved across the sky even a little since then was reason enough to suspect that this sense of timelessness was yet another oddity of their current situation. “I don't think there's any particular reason we have to rush into it.”

He studied her carefully. “You're not curious?”

“Not particularly,” she replied with a slight shrug and this time she was the one to break eye contact. It was a lie, however. Now that the topic had been broached, she found herself wondering just how the crown prince of Daxam of all people had ended up stuck in the same strange circumstances as her. She also began to wonder how different he actually was compared to what she had initially thought of him which had been coloured by prejudices and terrible first impressions. “I mean, not beyond whatever might be relevant to our situation.”

“Hmm.” His suspicious-sounding hum caused her to look up again to find him scrutinising her rather intensely.

“W-What is it?” she asked warily. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Oh, nothing.” He waved his hand in a somewhat dismissive gesture. “It's not important. And I'll be fine. If a little girl like you can do it, I should at least try, right?”

Kara's first instinct was to get upset; here she was trying to be understanding of his personal situation, whatever it was, and he had to go and look down on her like that. Hackles rising, she opened her mouth to spit out a heated retort-

-but stopped herself when she noticed the tenseness of his frame and how tightly he'd clenched his jaw. Then she replayed what he'd said in her head, paying particular attention to how he'd said it, and felt her anger fade away.

He hadn't meant it as an insult. Not one that was directed at her anyway. If anything, he'd sounded like he had been looking down on _himself_.

She didn't know what to do with that information.

Oblivious to the chaotic state of her mind, he closed his eyes and pressed his palm against his face. “I'm not really sure where I'm supposed to start,” he muttered.

“The beginning?” she suggested half-jokingly and then wondered if his sense of humour was rubbing off on her.

That coaxed a weak laugh out of him, however, so she decided it didn't matter. “Good idea,” he replied, a wry smile dancing on the edge of his lips although his expression turned grim again all too soon. “When Krypton exploded,” he finally said as his gaze settled on the horizon, “there were... side effects. Pieces of your planet rained down on Daxam. It was... It wasn't pretty.”

“Oh.” To say that Kara was at a loss for words was an understatement. All this time, she'd been so focused on the loss of her planet that she hadn't considered how its destruction might have affected other people. Even though they hadn't gotten along, it seemed so _wrong_ for Daxam to suffer because of Krypton... and when she thought about the way she'd treated him at the start, she felt even worse. As one of the only two living Kryptonians left in the universe, didn't the burden of her planet's sins, intentional and otherwise, fall on her shoulders? Wasn't she therefore responsible for whatever misery people like the man before her had experienced because of this?

Guilt and shame began to gnaw away at her heart as a wave of self-loathing threatened to consume her. How could she have been so... _selfish_?

“Don't.”

His out-of-the-blue utterance jolted her out of her spiral of self-hatred and regret and she looked up to find him frowning at her. “What?”

“You're blaming yourself or something like that, aren't you?” he asked although it didn't really sound like a question so much as a statement. “Well don't. It's not your fault, okay? I'd even go so far as to say that it's not even Krypton's fault because I highly doubt your people wanted it to happen. We shared a star. That's all.”

“I... I wasn't thinking that,” she mumbled somewhat defensively, a little unsettled that a complete stranger had managed to figure out what she had been thinking about. It was almost as if he'd read her mind.

“Hmm.” There was that hum again. “You know you get this little...” he pointed at the space between his own eyes, “this little crinkle right up there when you lie?”

“I don't have a crinkle,” she sputtered in her haste to deny his accusation.

The look he gave her clearly communicated his bemusement. “Yeah, you're crinkling right now.”

She slapped a hand over her now flushed face, taking care to cover the part he'd indicated, but parted her fingers so she could glare at him. “I don't have a crinkle!”

“You're crinkling at the moment,” he continued wryly. “I may not be able to see it right now but I'm sure of it.”

“You...” Kara struggled to come up with a way out of this conversation that didn't make things worse for herself. “You're just doing all this to distract me again, aren't you?”

The smile, however small, fell from his face and she once again found herself regretting her words. “Maybe,” he admitted as he sat up so he could rest his hands on his lap and stare at his open palms. “And maybe I'm trying to distract myself as well.”

Caught by surprise, she forgot about her own embarrassment and focused all her attention on him. She wasn't sure if she was more taken aback by what he'd just confessed or how quickly he'd done it. In hindsight, however, she could understand his position. “I already told you,” she half-whispered as she lowered her hand. “You don't have to talk about it now if you don't feel like it.”

He didn't look up. “I killed someone.”

The words sent a chill down her spine but her mind – and, mysteriously, her heart – rejected them. “I don't believe you.”

 _That_ got him to meet her gaze. “You sound very confident,” he noted neutrally, “considering you barely know me.”

“I...” Doubt briefly came over her but she banished it. “I know that a person who goes out of his way to help someone he's never met before and care about how they feel even though all they've done is yell at him would never take a life.” She stared unblinkingly at him, daring him to contradict her. “You don't seem like you're capable of it.”

He let out a startled laugh and looked away. “I can't tell if that was an insult or not.”

“It wasn't,” she clarified but said no more as she sensed that trying to argue with him about this would lead nowhere.

The silence that descended upon them lingered for some time before he felt compelled to speak up again. “I was with my tutor Bal-Seg when Krypton exploded. He was the one who suggested that I use my personal shuttle to escape Daxam.”

Something about the way he'd said his tutor's name told her there was a story there – a very long one at that – but she kept quiet. He was finally telling her the truth and she didn't want to interrupt him.

“My personal guard Hal-Ed must have gotten the same idea, I think, and went to prepare the shuttle before trying to find me so that I could leave immediately once I arrived. He was irritating like that, you know – kept trying to anticipate what I wanted or needed and 'prepared accordingly' even if I specifically told him not to do it. I ended up having to assign him the most ridiculous tasks around the palace on a daily basis just to keep him from driving me insane. And he still refused to act in a less than formal manner with me even just a little despite all that.”

“Was he waiting for you when you got there?” she asked curiously.

He laughed humourlessly as he closed his eyes. “In a way. A powerful duke from the royal court found him and my shuttle first. He must have taken Hal-Ed by surprise because when I showed up with Bal-Seg, Hal-Ed was dead at his feet.”

Kara clapped a hand over her mouth to prevent a gasp from escaping her lips.

“I wanted to leave and find another ship – there was only room for one person in my shuttle, you see – but Bal-Seg wouldn't have it. He got shot when he fought the duke for the gun but managed to win in the end. He... he killed him. There was-” He choked and was forced to clear his throat. “There was just... _so much blood_.”

“What... What happened next?” she asked in a whisper even though she was afraid she already knew the answer.

Another hollow laugh escaped him. (She found she hated the sound.) “Bal-Seg tricked me, that's what happened. Bastard used something I gave him as a gift to incapacitate me and put me in the shuttle before sending me off to Rao knows where.” He pressed a hand to his face and muttered something in what she assumed was Daxamite.

She didn't know where she'd gotten the courage to do what she did next. The only thing that had been on her mind was this overwhelming desire that bordered on desperation to pull him out of the darkness that was threatening to consume him. It had been so powerful she hadn't realised she'd reached out to touch him until her fingers had come to rest on his arm.

His eyes snapped open to stare at her in shock the moment he felt her touch and she yanked her hand back as if he'd burned her. “S-Sorry,” she stuttered as she tried – and failed – to stop her cheeks from flaming. “I-I-I just...”

“You'd never last a day in Daxam's royal court,” he said apropos of nothing.

The unexpected statement made her momentarily forget her embarrassment. “Where did that come from? And what's that supposed to mean?” she demanded. Was he trying to make fun of her again just to change the topic?

He smiled very faintly. “It was a compliment, I assure you. Not everything negative you've ever heard about my planet was an exaggeration.”

There it was again – that hint of self-recrimination in his voice. “B-But, um...” she stumbled over her own words in her efforts to – bizarrely enough – defend him from himself, “you're... I don't think you're as bad as you seem to believe.”

His smile vanished again. “People are dead because of me. Bal-Seg... Hal-Ed...” Even saying their names seemed to cause him pain. “If they hadn't tried to save me, they might still be alive.”

“Is that...” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Is that what you meant when you said you killed someone?”

His silence was answer enough.

“But you didn't!” she cried out as her vision began to blur with unshed tears. “That duke shot them, not you! It's not your fault! And... And you tried, didn't you? You wanted to save Bal-Seg, didn't you? That means _something_!”

The look he gave her made it clear that he didn't believe her. “What is it supposed to mean exactly?”

“That you... you deserve to live,” she whispered, and the way he flinched at her words made her realise she'd unwittingly found the heart of the matter at hand. “You wish you could have saved them and regret that you couldn't. It doesn't make what happened better or anything like that but... I think... I think the fact that you feel this way makes a lot of difference.”

He turned away but not in time for Kara to miss spotting the shine of his eyes which made her suspect that he was holding back tears of his own. “It doesn't change the fact that they died for my sake though.”

“It doesn't,” she agreed softly, “but they thought you were worth saving. Even if it cost them their lives in the end. What they wanted was for you to survive and you did. So... um... I think they wouldn't have wanted you to have these thoughts. A-And, um...” She fidgeted and dropped her gaze. “F-For what it's worth, I'm glad you're alive.” _I'm glad you're here_ , she thought but didn't say.

“I find that hard to believe, if you don't mind me saying,” he responded, prompting her to look up and find that he'd turned back to face her, a sad smile playing on his lips.

She couldn't help but frown, unsure as to which part of her statement he was referencing. Not that it mattered, when she thought about it. “Well then, I guess I'll just have to convince you.”

One of his eyebrows arched. “Is that a promise?”

“Yes,” she declared authoritatively.

The laugh that escaped him this time sounded much more genuine and Kara felt the tension that had coiled tight in her chest loosen a little. “You're very stubborn, you know.”

“I'll take that as a compliment,” she retorted even as the corners of her lips twitched upwards. “Besides, I think I'm in good company in that regard.”

He laughed again and she let herself revel in the sound. “Probably.”

There were so many questions swimming about in her head – about his life on Daxam, about Bal-Seg and Hal-Ed, about him as a person – but Kara kept them to herself for now. It had taken her longer than it should have to realise it but she was now sure that he was mourning in his own way and pushing him into talking about it before he felt ready to do so was not going to help. All he would likely do if she actively tried to coax him into answering her questions was make jokes to try and change the topic or descend into a spiral of self-loathing just like what he'd done earlier.

She could wait. She could be patient. After all, she had a feeling she literally had all the time in the world at her disposal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to feel like the angst-to-humour-to-fluff ratio of this fic is incredibly skewed... but I'll try to even it out a bit more in the future chapters.
> 
> ...I promise, okay?! >_<


	6. Imagination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few discoveries are made, leading to surprising possibilities and potential answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot advancement/Pseudo world-building plus fluff and humour with a decent helping of more backstory on the side equals long chapter. Enjoy?
> 
> Also, most of this was written at godforsaken hours while half-asleep due to it having been a busy week for me so please forgive any mistakes or inconsistencies you find.

The girl continued to surprise him. Mon-El wondered if there would come a time where that would stop being the case – if at some undetermined point in the future, they would both know each other so well that nothing the other person said or did would come as a shock.

It was a strange thought to have on so many levels. He wondered where it had come from. Randomness aside, didn't such a scenario require them to somehow not only be able to tolerate each other for a ludicrously long time but also _want_ to spend that much time together?

He almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all.

Then again, it seemed as if they might not have much of a choice in that regard considering they were no closer to figuring out where they were or how they had ended up in this mysterious place. There was also the fact that they seemed to be doing fine so far despite the incredibly rocky start of their acquaintanceship. Much better than either of them would have ever expected, he was sure. After all, while sharing the events which had led up to them waking up in this field had been somewhat necessary as part of their quest for answers, it was, in his opinion, a rather big deal that they had both been able to tell each other deeply private details which could have been kept secret with no consequences despite still being veritable strangers.

It had hurt, if he was being honest with himself. Even remembering that Bal-Seg and Hal-Ed were no longer with him had been painful enough; talking about it had felt like the emotional equivalent of pouring pure alcohol on an open wound. But he had persevered, and in the end he had in fact felt like the pain had lessened ever so slightly. He had her to thank for that, in a way. Her insistence that he didn't have to talk about it had actually helped the words to come out... and then there was the way she had reacted when he had told his story.

A part of him was even now still struggling to come to terms with the ferocity with which she'd argued in his defence when he'd begun giving in to the guilt that weighed on his soul. That she would first openly declare her refusal to believe him capable of murder and then reject his attempts to consider himself culpable for their deaths despite having only just met him recently... It was a far cry from the long list of insults and accusations she had hurled at him after he'd first introduced himself, to say the least.

Which brought him back to the 'veritable strangers' part of his internal musings.

“You know, we still haven't settled something I'd consider pretty important,” he spoke up, bringing an end to the companionable silence which had blanketed them.

She stared curiously at him, clearly lost as to what he might be talking about. “Settled what?”

So she'd forgotten about that. Not that he could blame her, considering how serious and emotionally taxing their conversation had become after he'd first mentioned it. There was also the possibility that she'd thought he'd only brought it up to distract her. “You know, addressing each other by name.”

“Oh. That.”

He narrowed his eyes playfully at her. “What, you weren't seriously going to keep referring to me as 'jerk', were you?”

“No...” she replied with a frown.

“Because in that case, I would have to keep referring to you as 'brat'. You know, in the name of fairness and all that,” he continued cheekily.

The frown turned into a glare. “If you do that, I _will_ call you nothing but 'jerk'. And it would be perfectly justified.”

Mon-El could not stop himself from grinning. There was that fire he'd come to expect from her. “So we're in agreement then? We're going to address each other by name in future conversations?”

“I...” She broke eye contact and tried to hide her face behind her knees like before. He couldn't be entirely sure of it but if he had to guess, she was probably feeling a little shy. “I suppose...”

Oh. Maybe he'd misread the situation? While it was true that they'd shared things about themselves that were immensely personal, the fact of the matter was that they could hardly consider their relationship to be anything more than 'two people who happen to be stuck in a mysterious situation together and would otherwise have preferred to have nothing to do with each other'. It was apparently too soon and too presumptuous to think they were tentatively becoming... well, friends. “We don't actually _have_ to do it, you know,” he pointed out gently. “I mean, it's not like either of us is going to have any problem figuring out when we're being spoken to considering there's no one else around here.”

She shook her head vehemently at that. “N-No, I... I want to. Kind of. I-I mean...” she trailed off, clearly unsure as to how to articulate her thoughts. “It's just, um... I'm not used to the idea. Addressing someone outside of my family in such a casual manner, I mean.” She winced. “Not that I've been particularly formal or even remotely polite all this while, but... I'm sorry, I feel like I'm not making much sense. Even to myself.”

“Well, we _have_ been doing this all out of order,” he joked lightly even as he realised what she was trying to say. “People usually start off calling each other by name before they graduate to exchanging insults at every turn.” In hindsight, he should have known. The child of a prestigious family like the house of El would undoubtedly have been tutored at home much like him instead of being sent to a general educator. Aside from the occasional guest of her parents, she would have had few opportunities to talk to anyone not related to her by blood or marriage. Even then, her interactions with these hypothetical guests would have been short and formal in nature. When he looked at it that way, he was probably the first non-family member she'd ever spoken more than five words to in her admittedly young life... and now that they were trying to interact with each other like normal people, she was a little lost as to how to proceed.

“Now is a good time as any to fix that,” she said, doing her best to sound firm even though he could tell she was still a little nervous. “I... may I call you Mon-El then?”

“You may,” he responded with a grin that he hoped looked more friendly than mischievous. “And are you all right with me calling you Kara?”

She nodded. This time, her nervousness was less obvious.

“Okay. So Kara,” he tested the sound of her name on his tongue. It was a nice name but he was pretty sure that if he told her that she'd probably accuse him of teasing her. “You hungry?”

She shook her head.

“Thirsty?”

Another shake of the head.

“Hmm. Same here.” More oddities about their current situation. Considering how long it had been since they had woken up in this place, Mon-El had somewhat expected thirst or hunger to have become an issue by now. Although it was actually hard for him to say how much time had actually passed considering he'd observed earlier that the sun shining down on them remained unmoving in the sky. It seemed as if time itself was an issue all on its own...

“It's weird, isn't it?” she asked, drawing his attention back to her. “But then again, it doesn't seem like any time has actually passed despite everything that's happened so it's hard to say if it just hasn't been long enough for us to start feeling hungry or thirsty. I mean, we've been talking for quite some time and yet...” She pointed upwards at the static sun to illustrate her point.

“Oh, so you noticed that too, huh?” He really should stop being surprised by now but in his defence, they _were_ still getting to know each other.

She shrugged non-committally. “Hard not to. It's probably a good thing, though.”

“You mean the timelessness?” he asked, perplexed. How was that beneficial to their situation?

“Well, I mean, if time is frozen then we don't have to worry about how long it takes us to figure out the truth behind our circumstances, right?” Strange. The crinkle was absent which meant she wasn't lying but for some reason he felt like she wasn't exactly telling the whole truth, either. “Although I was actually referring to us not getting hungry or thirsty since I don't think we're going to have much luck finding anything to eat or drink here.”

She had a point there. Although... “What, you don't think the plants around us look appetising?” he asked with false innocence.

Kara stared at him incredulously. “Why, do you?”

“Oh no,” he denied smoothly as he struggled to keep a straight face. “But it seems like a good enough option if _you_ start to feel hungry.”

“Ha ha. Very funny. How about you give it a try first and let me know if it's even edible or not? Because if I fall sick, you'll have the responsibility of taking care of me.”

“Why would I have to take care of you? It's not like I forced you to eat it in this hypothetical situation.”

“Hypothetically speaking, if you don't, I'll make you as miserable as I feel.”

“Was that a threat? Wow. So you finally show your true colours, Kryptonian.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures. After all, I _am_ dealing with a Daxamite.”

By this point, Mon-El had given up trying to contain his grin. Kara, on the other hand, was still valiantly doing her best not to show that she might actually be enjoying their little back-and-forth. “Just so you know,” he told her with mock seriousness, “I've had prior experience dealing with temperamental dragons that are unhappy you forgot to give them their favourite treat for the day. You have no idea how hard it is to ride a creature that's intent on throwing you off mid-flight. So whatever you think you can do to make me regret not catering to your whims, trust me when I say it's _nothing_ compared to that.”

The half-smile slipped off her face and she blinked at him in surprise. “You've flown on dragons before?”

“Well, yes,” he replied slowly, caught off guard by how quickly and eagerly she'd jumped on that seemingly insignificant detail. “Not to brag but I was a pretty good Garata player as well. I even had my own dragon and everything. I mean, I _am_ the crown prince of Daxam after all.”

“You did?” Clearly captivated, she scooted closer, her blue eyes wide with open curiosity. “What's playing Garata actually like? I always thought it was too dangerous for my liking. But the flying looked fun! I mean, dangerous but still fun. How safe is it anyway? And you had your own dragon? What did he look like? Or was it a she?”

“Okay, slow down there,” he laughed as he held his hands up in mock surrender. “One question at a time please. Which one do you want answered first?”

The look of intense deliberation on her face was rather amusing but he bit back the laugh that threatened to spill out of him. “Tell me about your dragon?” she said after a moment.

“It was a she. I named her Nes'th – it means 'swift' in old Daxamite.” His voice turned wistful and he cast his gaze towards the horizon as he let the memories come to him. “I was there when she hatched, you know. Her mother belonged to one of Daxam's greatest Garata players at the time so her pedigree was of the highest order both in terms of bloodline and prestige. She was really small at first though – much smaller than newly-hatched dragons were supposed to be – so everyone kept trying to convince me to choose another one. There was no way she would grow up to be a dragon worth keeping, they said, and that was if she even lived long enough to reach adulthood.”

She listened, enraptured. “But you stuck with her anyway?” she asked, and watched as the shadow of a fond grin crossed his face.

“Well, it was partially out of stubbornness,” he admitted a little sheepishly. “I'd made my choice and I didn't want it to seem as if I didn't know what I was doing. Besides, I kind of felt bad for her. Nobody else seemed to want her because they didn't think she was going to be worth the trouble and she would have likely been allowed to waste away and die if I hadn't picked her.”

Strangely enough, Kara found she wasn't surprised. It seemed like a very Mon-El thing to do. “What happened after that?”

“Well, I took her home and bullied the stable-hands into teaching me how to take care of her,” he chuckled. “They kept assuring me that they would handle everything but I wanted to be certain she would be all right. So I'd go feed her at least once a day and tell her as she ate that she had to grow up to be a really strong and beautiful dragon or she'd embarrass me. It was a royal decree, I'd say, so she'd better do as I ordered or else. And all she'd do in response was give me this look that seemed to imply she wanted to just chomp on my face for my insolence. Bal-Seg always wondered out loud who was the bigger royal pain in the ass – my words, not his. I once suggested that she eat him but all he said was that an old man like him wouldn't provide much nutritional value; young well-fed princes made for better meals, he insisted. Traitor actually looked interested.”

She stifled a giggle at the mental image of a young Mon-El barking orders at a grumpy little dragon while a wizened old man rolled his eyes in the background. “So did she listen to you or not?”

“Oh, she did.” The fond smile was back. “She was magnificent to behold as an adult. I swear I'm not exaggerating just because she was mine but there was no dragon on Daxam that rivalled her in beauty. And you should have seen her fly. The way her black and blue scales glinted under Rao's light-”

A distortion akin to a small black hole manifested in front of them.

Startled, she let out a sharp scream as they both scrambled to their feet and took a few steps back. Mon-El's hand clamped down on her wrist and he tugged her close. “Kara, get behind me,” he ordered.

She didn't resist and instead grasped fistfuls of his shirt as she peeked around his torso to stare at the distortion which vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “What... What _was_ that?” she asked fearfully. Was this mysterious place not as safe as it initially seemed?

“I'm not sure,” he admitted with a worried frown on his face. “Although... that colour... and I _was_ thinking of...”

The reappearance of the distortion interrupted her attempt to ask him to explain the meaning behind his disjointed mumblings. This time, she managed to stop herself from screaming out loud although she did tighten her grip on his clothes.

“Huh.” In contrast, Mon-El seemed like he had been expecting it. “I think I might have an idea of what's going on.” He turned his head to give her a reassuring smile and patted her hands, a gesture she took to mean he wanted her to let go of his shirt. “It's okay. If I'm right, there's no reason to be scared. Just let me test something out. Whatever happens next, don't panic, all right?”

“What?” He wasn't making sense. Fear made her want to refuse his silent request but her trust in him compelled her to oblige and he stepped forward once she uncurled her fists to release her hold on his clothes. “Mon-El, what's going on?”

He didn't answer, having closed his eyes and held his hands out as if he was trying to stop something invisible in front of him. The look of intense concentration on his face dissuaded her from speaking up again although she did instinctively reach out for him when the distortion appeared once more.

Then she watched, transfixed, as it got bigger and more solid until it finally took on a more recognisable shape that flattened a significant amount of vegetation under its large clawed feet.

She was looking at a dragon. A sleek, breathtakingly beautiful dragon with jet black and midnight blue scales that glinted under the sunlight, looking for all the world as if it was the night sky made corporeal.

Mon-El, who by then had opened his eyes and approached the creature to pet it with a faint smile on his face, murmured something in Daxamite that ended with 'Nes'th', confirming her suspicions that she was in fact somehow in the presence of his dragon. It still didn't explain how this was possible, however.

“She's not real,” he said out loud in Kryptonian as if he had somehow heard her unasked question even as he continued to stroke Nes'th's head. “Technically speaking, anyway. I... I think I _willed_ her into existence here.” He glanced over and smiled encouragingly. “You can come closer and touch her if you want. I'm pretty sure I'm controlling her – literally, in fact – so it's safe. She won't bite or anything.”

Despite the reassurance, Kara was still hesitant when she approached the dragon which regarded her with a welcoming gaze that seemed to mirror Mon-El's warm look. As she met its gaze, however, she noticed something odd. While its eyes were a bright yellow in colour unlike his, she felt as if she was staring into Mon-El's eyes instead – as if she was looking right into his soul. She shook off the strange impression and focused her attention on the dragon as she trailed her fingers along its side and marvelled at the smoothness of its scales. It _felt_ real enough...

“Now for the real test.”

Movement at the corner of her eye caused her to snap her head to the side whereupon she saw Mon-El climb up on the dragon's back with practised ease. “W-What are you doing?” she asked incredulously.

“Riding her. What else does it look like I'm trying to do?” he replied matter-of-factly. “Or at least I'm going to see if I can make her fly. If I created her and can control her movements, it seems logical to conclude that I can make her do what she can naturally do and that's get her in the air. It's a worthwhile experiment to run anyway. So are you coming?”

“Coming? What? Where?” Kara's brain refused to process what he was saying. He couldn't possibly be suggesting...

He gave her a rather exasperated look. “With me, of course. Come on, it'll be safe, I promise. Well, I hope so anyway. But I'll be here so you don't have to worry. So climb on and let's see if I'm right. And don't worry about the lack of a saddle. It won't be necessary. Probably.”

Fear and excitement warred within her as she struggled to make up her mind until she finally caved and held up a hand so he could help pull her up. “I'm going to regret this, aren't I?” she asked wearily as she clambered up to sit behind him and wrapped her arms tight around his waist.

She couldn't see his face from her position but she was almost certain he was grinning. “Trust me, you won't.”

“No, I'm pretty sure I'm already regretting th-” The rest of her sentence devolved into a frightened shriek as the dragon unfurled its wings, kicked off and took to the sky.

 _Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it_ , she mentally chanted as she tried to focus on everything else that came to mind instead of the fact that she was _flying on a dragon_ and the ground seemed _very_ far down. Could this be a way out of this place? She doubted it; the view still consisted of endless stretches of the same greenery that covered the ground below them. And yet she could feel the wind on her face which indicated that they were actually moving rather quickly. More questions instead of answers. Again.

“I can hear you thinking,” he called out to her, jarring her out of her thoughts. “Just stop for a bit and enjoy the moment, Kara!” Then he let out a whoop of joy and they went soaring higher into the sky before he sent them spiralling almost straight down. (She screamed the entire way.)

It seemed like forever before Mon-El finally had them land and Kara practically fell off the dragon in her haste to get her feet back on solid ground. Focused as she was on calming her racing heart, she barely noticed as he slid off the dragon which vanished almost immediately afterwards and collapsed on his back next to where she was resting on her hands and knees.

“Okay, so.” He seemed excited despite the exhausted look on his face. “It looks like maintaining Nes'th – or that construct of her anyway – takes quite a bit of energy and if I stop focusing on her, she disappears. I'm going to take a guess and say that this probably applies to anything else I try to will into existence here. On that note, I have a theory about this place.”

“That none of this is real?” she asked in between gulps of air.

“Precisely.” He grinned up at her. “It sounds insane, I know, but it's paradoxically the only thing that makes sense. I'd say we're either having some kind of shared dream or someone found us floating in space and put us in some kind of advanced virtual simulation. Which would be weird and kind of disturbing on more than one level so let's pretend that isn't what's happening here. Besides, the shared dream theory fits better. Think about the last time you had a dream – how nonsensical things happened in it for no reason and you didn't really realise they were nonsensical until you woke up. When you look at it that way, how else do you explain everything we've discovered about this place?”

“That's true,” she admitted grudgingly. Until and unless they found out something which contradicted this conclusion – which she doubted –, they were going to have to work with this hypothesis.

“Your turn now.”

She stared at him in bafflement. “My turn to what?”

“To create something, of course,” he answered as he stared back expectantly. “If I can do it, I bet you can too. Come on.” He got to his feet, having seemingly recovered from his earlier exhaustion for the most part, and offered her his hand. “Let's give it a try, shall we? How about you try to recreate Nes'th? Or at least a dragon like her?”

“I don't know...” she trailed off doubtfully but let him pull her to her feet all the same. At the sight of his slightly crestfallen look, however, she found herself sighing in defeat. “All right, I'll try.”

“Great!” Mon-El moved to stand behind her and clapped his hands on her shoulders in what she supposed was meant to be an encouraging gesture. “Okay, now just close your eyes and focus on the image of the dragon. Don't think about stuff like its physiology; just concentrate on how it looks and then think about what it was like just now flying in the sky with me. Remember the feeling of the wind on your face and the sound of its wings beating. That's it... okay, open your eyes.”

When she did as instructed, Kara found herself staring into the eyes of a yellow-eyed dragon with bright red and blue scales. “I... I did it!” she cheered ecstatically and looked up to meet his bright grin with her own wide smile.

“See? I knew you could do it. Although I have to say using the colours of your family crest is a nice personal touch,” he noted bemusedly. “Next step now.”

With that, he unceremoniously lifted her by the waist and placed her on top of her dragon before she could so much as squeak in surprise. “M-Mon-El! You can't seriously expect me to fly on my own!” she squawked as she threw her arms around the dragon's neck in a panic, torn between clinging on for dear life and trying to climb down.

“You won't know until you try,” he pointed out. “And I'm not expecting you to replicate any of the moves I pulled with Nes'th earlier. Just try and see if you can get your dragon off the ground. I'll be right here, okay? You don't have anything to worry about.”

She gulped audibly. “...If you say so,” she mumbled although she sounded unconvinced even to her own ears. Just like before, she closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on the dragon she was sitting on, willing it to unfurl its wings and flap them. Slowly but surely, she felt the dragon respond to her mental commands both physically and in her own head as if it existed in both spaces at once. When she opened her eyes again, she and the dragon were hovering a sizeable distance above ground.

“That's great, Kara!” Mon-El yelled up at her as he gave her his trademark grin. “Okay, concentrate on slowly coming back down and don't focus on the ground.”

She made the mistake of doing exactly what he had just told her not to do. That was when she realised exactly how high she really was... and when she stopped thinking about the dragon that was keeping her up in the air.

Said dragon promptly vanished and for one heart-stopping moment, Kara found herself in free fall.

The sound of her terrified scream drowned out the litany of curses that escaped Mon-El's lips as he recreated Nes'th and jumped on. Luckily, his quick thinking – literally in this case – ensured that he was able to fly up and catch her in mid-air. “Got you,” he wheezed as she collided painfully with his chest. “It's okay. I got you. You're safe.”

“S-Sorry,” she stuttered through her fear as her hands grasped his shirt in a vice-like grip.

“Good. You should be,” he groaned lightly as he directed Nes'th to slowly descend. “Please don't scare me like that again. I know we've theorised that all this isn't quite real but let's not find out if we can get hurt – or worse, die – here, okay?”

She nodded shakily, deciding to focus her attention on reassuring herself that she wasn't still falling to her death instead of giving him a verbal response.

“Thank you.” When they finally landed, he gently put her down as his dragon once again vanished and barely avoided face-planting into the vegetation when the adrenaline wore off and his exhaustion caught up with him. “Now excuse me while I slip into a mini-coma.”

“Well,” she finally said after a long while of them just lying on the grass learning how to breathe normally again instead of gasping for air like dying animals, “at least now we have an interesting and productive way to pass the time. In a manner of speaking, anyway.”

He turned his head to the side to regard her with feigned surprise. “Planning to fall from the sky again so I have to literally swoop in and rescue you? I didn't think you were the type, Kara.”

“Oh shut up, Mon-El. You know very well what I meant,” she said as she levelled a flat look at him.

“Hmm... nope, nothing else comes to mind. Just you and your apparently chronic desire to get into trouble so I have to save you.”

She aimed a kick at his shins but missed when he pulled his leg away in time. “I do _not_ like or want to get into trouble, thank you very much. And for the record, you're the last person in the universe I want to help me out when I do anyway.”

“Says the girl who literally did precisely what I told her not to do immediately after I told her not do it. And you're not exactly at the top of my list when it comes to people I'm willing to risk my wellbeing to help either.”

Neither of them needed to even look for each other's tells to know the other person was lying. (The fact that they both failed to stop themselves from grinning was another giveaway.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These dream construct 'powers' are going to be oh so fun to play with for both me and our two space puppies, let me tell you. And important too. But that will come later. Also, they're finally actually addressing each other by name! And it only took them... five/six chapters! ...Is there a sub-category of slow burn fic that applies to friendships? Because I think this fic qualifies. >_>


	7. Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mon-El teaches. Kara learns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you don't mind infodumps disguised as bonding moments. It's part one of my attempt to stitch together show canon and comic canon (and maybe a bit of movie canon) to create something new.

Through a series of extensive and at times quite creative experiments, Kara and Mon-El were able to establish several 'rules', for lack of a better word, where their newly-discovered 'powers' were concerned:

The more complicated the construct, as Mon-El dubbed them, the more effort it took to not only create them but also maintain them. This seemed to be the base rule.

Surprisingly, organic constructs like their dragons were easier to manage than non-organic ones unless they were incredibly simple items such as tables and chairs. Mon-El theorised that this was due to their minds subconsciously 'processing' organic constructs as singular entities. Meanwhile, their awareness of complex non-organic things such as machines being multiple parts working in tandem instead of a whole meant that the mental strain of creating them was greater in comparison.

Size mattered. It was unsurprising considering what they'd already established... although Kara did find the ensuing experiment of how large Mon-El could make Nes'th before he got too tired a little unsettling. (He made it up to her by creating a miniature Nes'th that could fit in her palm. Her resulting squeal rendered him temporarily deaf but he found it hard to be annoyed with her for it when he saw the look of pure joy on her face.)

Changing a construct that had already been created was more taxing than creating it in its desired state from the start and the more drastic the change, the more effort it took to accomplish it. It was Kara who suggested that this was probably because they were essentially trying to maintain the original while simultaneously altering it... and she failed to stop herself from flushing with pride when Mon-El agreed with her while sporting an impressed grin.

With enough willpower, they could actually alter their environment. They had started by each individually trying to transform the ground beneath their feet into proper flooring – describing the sight of solid steel fading into grass as 'visually strange' was an understatement – and slowly worked their way up to walls. As expected, the endeavour required quite a bit of effort to pull off but both of them saw a great deal of promise in this particular application of their powers. Perhaps they could even change the sky if they tried hard enough? Would it affect their sense of timelessness? Only further experimentation would give them the answers they desired, it seemed.

Perhaps the most valuable and important thing they discovered along the way, however, was the fact that their powers were slowly but surely getting stronger. The more they used them, the better and longer they were able to use them before they tired themselves out. (“Like a muscle.” “Exactly what I was thinking.”) Practice, it seemed, was the key.

 

* * *

 

To say that their current situation 'fascinated' him seemed a little inaccurate. Mon-El was beyond intrigued. He was, for all intents and purposes, not only in a dream and fully aware of it but also _sharing_ that dream with someone he had never met before in his entire life – someone who would likely have remained a complete stranger to him until his dying day if not for said shared dream. Where did he even begin in his quest to understand all of this? And was there a way for them to escape?

There were just so many questions.

Based on what they had experienced, it didn't seem like the traditional ways of waking up from a dream worked. Kara falling to what she had believed at the time to be her death had not magically ejected her from this world. Pain was out of the equation as well, considering the force with which she'd crashed into his chest when he'd caught her had been so great he was almost sure he'd at least gotten bruised... and yet here he remained. (He didn't know if he was supposed to be surprised or not when he lifted his shirt after that incident only to find his chest devoid of bruises.)

All he could do was try to gather more data... and that meant more practice.

The next experiment they had attempted was duplication – specifically, how well they could copy each other's constructs without the one doing the copying being familiar with what was being created. Mon-El had taken the lead with Kara being the one who had to replicate whatever he created and they soon discovered that while it was possible, it was twice as taxing for the one trying to copy the other person. It was not long before Kara found herself too tired to keep up and her latest attempt fell apart, forcing her to take a much-needed break while Mon-El continued creating things at random for the exercise.

“...Hey, Mon-El?”

“Hmm?” Well, this was an unexpected but welcome opportunity to test his capabilities: could he split his attention evenly between maintaining his construct and giving Kara the attention she deserved? He chanced a glance at where she was sitting on the vegetation watching him with her knees drawn up like usual. “What is it?”

“Can I ask you something?” She seemed strangely hesitant. “I've been meaning to but I didn't know how and when to bring it up because... well... I-It might seem a little weird so I understand if you don't want to answer though.”

He shrugged; there didn't seem to be any reason for him to expect her question to be something he would be reluctant to discuss. “Ask away.”

Her hesitation lingered for a while longer before she seemingly banished it and pressed on. “Is there a reason your name sounds... well, if someone didn't know any better, they could actually mistake you for being a member of my family with that name. I mean... if I remember my lessons correctly, isn't your father's name Lar Gand? Why doesn't your name end with Gand like his? Or are names handled differently on Daxam?”

“Oh. That.” Huh. While it wasn't a topic he would shy away from exactly, he certainly hadn't expected it at all. “It's a tradition thing that dates back... well, there are two parts to this, actually. To be clear, we do have family names like Kryptonians except the women of my planet take only the family name when they marry and daughters only inherit that same family name. Meanwhile, yours take on the full name of the patriarch of the family unit... well, like you. Your mother became Alura Zor-El after she married your father and your full name is Kara Zor-El. On Daxam, both of you would only have had the '-El' added to your first names. But I digress. The royal family of Daxam doesn't actually have a family name to call its own. Not any more, at least.”

She blinked in confusion. “What? How did that happen?”

“Well, it's like this,” he began to explain, hoping he wasn't sounding like he was delivering a boring lecture in the process. “This might be a bit long-winded so bear with me here. Daxamites in general are allowed to have as many children as they like. Ten or none at all – it's up to each and every couple to decide. Seemed only fair considering no one really gets to choose who they marry. On Daxam, we had arranged marriages; everyone had their mates chosen for them at birth. When both parties reach a certain age, they're latched to each other. Hal-Ed was really lucky in that regard, by the way. He developed actual feelings for the woman he was to marry before they were even latched. But I digress again. If I remember _my_ lessons correctly, that wasn't the case on Krypton, right?”

She shook her head. “No, everyone got to decide who they married but births were managed carefully for population control purposes using the Birthing Matrix. There were exceptions and unusual cases though. Like... well, my mother actually had an identical twin, you know – my aunt Astra. They say the Birthing Matrix had a glitch or something like that but it was taken as a sign from Rao so my grandparents were considered blessed. My baby cousin was a different kind of exception – the first natural birth on Krypton in... centuries, I think Uncle Jor-El said.”

“Bet your aunt and uncle had fun with _that_ 'experiment',” he snickered under his breath.

“What did you just say?” she asked with narrowed eyes.

“Nothing,” he replied innocently. “Where was I...? Oh, right. This part of the tradition dates back to the dawn of Daxam's New Age and you'll note it sounds a little like how your planet handles this matter. The royal family, in contrast to the rest of its people, has a 'only one offspring per generation' rule – unless the first one dies somehow, that is; then a... replacement is made – and we use our own version of the Birthing Matrix to produce said child so that there would be less strain on the queen that way. Helps avoid succession issues, if you get my meaning.”

“Ah.” If there was only one possible heir to the throne, no one had to worry about two or more royal siblings fighting each other for it. “But how is that connected to-”

“-the lack of a royal family name?” he finished for her with a grin. “I'm getting there. Now this part of the tradition dates back to the birth of the kingdom of Daxam – before it was even called Daxam, mind you. See, at the beginning, the tribes of Sard – that's Daxam's old name – were at constant war with one another until one managed to emerge the victor by either subjugating the other tribes through Dakkam Ur – a sacred rite that's basically trial by combat between two champions or, in this case, tribe leaders – or forging alliances with them. The head of that tribe – my distant ancestor Vell Or – crowned himself the first king of Sard while the heads of the tribes that had allied themselves with him became the heads of the first noble houses of the fledgling royal court.”

Mon-El chanced another glance at Kara and found her staring at him with rapt attention although he could tell she was bursting to ask how this tied back to her initial question. The effort that was required of him to suppress his grin took some of his concentration away from his construct which flickered dangerously as a result and he was forced to refocus in order to restore it.

“The seer of Vell Or's tribe became the royal prophet and subsequently declared that this was the divine will of the gods – that Vell Or and his descendants were destined to lead Sard and its people to a glorious future,” he continued. “Desiring to maintain the gods' favour in light of this, Vell Or declared that while subsequent children would have his family name like normal, the names of his firstborn, their firstborn and so forth – essentially the child that would inherit the throne by default – would be determined by the gods themselves.”

“How did – does – that even work?” she asked confusedly. “You just... _ask_ them?”

“In a way,” he laughed. “The seer performed a special ceremony upon the birth of the firstborn which would supposedly allow him to communicate with the gods in order to learn what plan they had for the child. This 'plan' would come to the seer in the form of a single word in Sardite – that is, what we now call old Daxamite – which would be turned into a proper name that would then be inscribed with special ink – invisible unless exposed to the right compound – somewhere on the child.”

She frowned. “That sounds kind of... well, weird. Why do they do that?”

“To mark the child as having been blessed by the gods and as proof that he or she was the true heir to the kingdom. I guess Vell Or didn't want anyone trying to swap out his descendants for theirs and usurp the throne that way,” he explained. “Still, there were a few times where things got... messy between royal siblings so when the Birthing Matrix came into play, the 'only one offspring per generation' rule was implemented to avoid future succession issues. Consequently, the royal family name of Or eventually ceased to be used once the branch families had all been absorbed into the other noble houses. Anyway, the word the gods apparently chose for me is 'm'onel' which means 'wanderer' so my name became... well, Mon-El.”

“I see...” She paused, a pensive look on her face. “What does that mean in regard to this supposed 'plan' the gods have for you?”

He shrugged. “I really don't know. No one ever does, actually, in the entire history of this tradition. Well, not until something big happens which could be tied back to the name's meaning. I do love to travel, though, so maybe that's why I have this name.” Another glance at her revealed she still had that look of hesitant curiosity on her face. “Does that answer all your questions?”

“Um...” Weird. If anything, she looked even more hesitant than before. “I... There's something else I want to ask you which is related to all this. Well, kind of. I-It's, um... It's not really a question though?”

The strain of maintaining his construct and paying attention to Kara was slowly getting to him but Mon-El persevered. After all, he wasn't going to improve if he didn't keep pushing himself. “Whatever it is, Kara, you don't have to be nervous. I promise I'll be fine with it.”

“So you say...” she mumbled somewhat glumly. “I just... I don't want you to get mad at me. Or think I'm overstepping my bounds. Or-”

“Kara,” he cut her off sternly but regretted it when she flinched. “I swear to Rao I won't even get the slightest bit annoyed no matter what it is or think you're crossing a line,” he continued in a gentler tone. “So go ahead.”

He heard her take a fortifying breath and then another. “W-Would you... um, be willing to teach me Daxamite?”

His construct vanished with a comical 'pop' as he whirled to stare at her with his mouth hanging open. “Sorry, _what_?!”

Predictably, his outburst caused her to physically recoil. “You said you wouldn't get mad,” she half-whispered, her voice pained as she curled up tight and tried to hide her face behind her knees like she always did when she was feeling emotionally vulnerable.

“NO! No no no, I swear I'm not mad!” he insisted as he waved his hands in front of him in a panic. Oh Rao, was she going to cry? She was going to cry, wasn't she? Grife, grife, grife, grife, grife! “You just took me by surprise, that's all! I promise!”

Kara blinked several times in rapid succession, the blue of her eyes highlighted by a shine that he was despairingly certain was attributable to tears being barely held in check. “...Is that true?”

If he nodded any more vigorously, Mon-El was sure his head was going to fall off. “Yes,” he answered with what he hoped was a reassuring grin but was sure looked a little too manic. “Okay, look. I was definitely surprised by your request, yes. But I'm not saying no. It's just a language – my native tongue, yes, but still just a language. It's not like it's a secret I have to keep or anything, so... yeah. I don't mind teaching you but, I mean...” He stared at her helplessly. “ _Why?_ ”

“I... um...” She broke eye contact and looked down. “You don't... You don't have anything with you to remind you of home, do you? O-Or the people you cared about?” One of her hands had moved to grasp the necklace hanging around her neck in the meantime. “I mean... this necklace... it belonged to my mother and she gave it to me before... before we said goodbye to each other... but you... that doesn't seem to be the case for you.”

“Uh, yeah, I don't,” he answered slowly, lost as to where she was going with this. Sensing that this was going to be a long and serious conversation, however, he decided to sit down facing her, close enough that their toes were nearly touching. “Never been much of a jewellery person.” In hindsight, however, it would have been nice to have something he could hold on to like her but unfortunately all he had with him was the clothes on his back. The people he had truly cared about had never been into gift-giving for one reason or another. For example, Bal-Seg's idea of a gift had been his self-described priceless wisdom... and apparently a chance for Mon-El to live at the cost of his own.

He shoved the thought back into the dark corners of his mind from where it had emerged and was grateful when Kara began speaking again. It was a good distraction and besides, he really wanted to know what had prompted this. “S-So, um... I was just thinking... I mean... I-It's not really something physical but...” She had stopped fiddling with her necklace and was now wringing her hands as a blush slowly crept up her neck. “I-I figured you might at least like us to... to be able to talk to each other in Daxamite every now and then. You know, instead of... of always having to only speak in Kryptonian for my sake. I-I mean, it's not much but... it's still a piece of your home in a way and... and it's the least I can do. F-For you.”

It was perhaps a good thing that he had decided to sit down earlier because if he hadn't, Mon-El was sure his legs would have given way under him at her words. “...What?” he whispered faintly. The size of this girl's heart... it humbled him to no end. That she was willing to learn a whole new language – _his_ language – so that he could have the simple pleasure of hearing his native tongue being spoken... how was he supposed to handle something like that?

“I-It's just...” Having mistaken his non-answer for a sign that he was reconsidering his initial agreement to teach her, she continued babbling. “You've been taking care of me – I mean, you even saved my life – and this was the only way I could think of to at least try to repay you even just a little for that.” She abruptly jerked her head up to meet his bewildered gaze with her earnest one, causing him to reel back a bit in surprise at the intensity of her expression. “So please... _please_... I know I'm asking more of you in the process but-”

“Okay,” he said, smiling slightly at the stunned look on her face as she registered his answer. “I'll teach you.”

The smile she gave him in return was beautiful in its sincerity and warmth. “Thank you!”

“I should be thanking you, considering,” he chuckled softly as he shook his head in disbelief. “Well... uh, when do you want to start?”

“How about now?” Judging by her eagerness, she seemed a little afraid that he would change his mind later if she didn't seize her chance. “It would be a nice break from all the experiments.”

“All right then.” He paused and furrowed his brow. “Uh, give me a minute to figure out how this is supposed to be done. I mean, I've never had to teach anyone before, you know. For obvious reasons.”

She eyed him curiously. “Why not just teach me the way you learned Kryptonian? How did Bal-Seg tutor you?”

That got a sheepish laugh out of him and he scratched his jaw as he turned away. “I don't think you'd appreciate your knuckles getting rapped with a metal rod every time you got something wrong. Especially if you did it on purpose.”

His statement earned him an incredulous look. “Exactly how much of a brat _were_ you? And how in the world did Bal-Seg manage to put up with you?”

“Answer to your first question: you don't want to know. Answer to your second question: he didn't let me get away with much. But that's a story for another time, okay? Let's see...” He mulled his current dilemma for a while longer, doing his best to figure out a way to teach her what she wanted to know without letting things get too boring. “How about this? I'll teach you how to say a few common phrases first and then we'll go from there. Does that work for you?”

She nodded vigorously. “Whatever you think is fine.”

“Okay. Uh...” For a moment, he considered pulling a harmless prank on her by letting her repeat something ridiculous or embarrassing in Daxamite but then he buried that urge. It didn't seem nice to take advantage of her innocent and trusting nature like that. Besides, he really was grateful that she was willing to do this for him and he feared that if he used her eagerness to make fun of her, she would not only stop wanting to learn but also feel hurt that he would do such a thing. And he didn't want to hurt her. “It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said in Daxamite and waited patiently for her to repeat it back to him.

...Except what came out of her mouth next was something _completely_ different.

Mon-El felt his eyebrows disappear into his hairline. “Um.”

His muted reaction caught Kara's attention and she eyed him strangely. “What? Did I pronounce it wrongly or something?”

“Ummmmmmm.” Oh Rao, how was he supposed to tell her that- No no no, he couldn't tell her. No way. For her sake, she could never know. _Never_ ever.

Unfortunately for him, she was too smart for her own good and had figured out that something was wrong. “Mon-El, what did I say?” she asked suspiciously.

“Trust me, it's nothing,” he tried to assure her with a nervous smile. “Can we just... uh, move on? Try saying something else? O-Or written Daxamite! You want to learn that too, don't you?”

“Mon-El...” she said warningly. He'd forgotten just how stubborn she could be... and this was one of those times where he _really_ wished she wasn't like that. “Tell me what I said right now or so help me I'll make you suffer.”

His face fell. “Are you sure I can't convince you to give this up?” he asked desperately.

She wouldn't budge. “Yes.”

“You're going to regret this.”

“I'll be the judge of that. Now spit it out.”

He told her.

She paled. “You're lying.”

Pity drove him to try and lie even if he was painfully aware that she could tell when he wasn't being truthful. “Um, sure. Let's go with that.”

Impossibly, she paled even more as she realised he wasn't trying to trick her. “Oh Rao. You're not lying.”

“Kara-” he started in a hopeless attempt to fix things.

In the span of a heartbeat, her face went from deathly pale to flame-red and she clapped her hands over her mouth in horror. “It can't- I can't believe- Nononononono...”

Then a thick blanket materialised out of thin air and fell on top of her, covering her entirely and his feet as well.

“Um, Kara...” This was... kind of really bad. The old him would probably have found this hilarious but her distress was almost contagious and he felt his stomach sink. The only good thing about this was that she had chosen a blanket to hide herself with and hadn't decided to create a hole under her instead. (He shuddered to think what would happen if, in this scenario, she stopped focusing on said hole while she was still in it.) “Kara, come on. Hiding's not going to accomplish anything.”

“Leave me alone!” she cried out in anguish, her voice half-muted thanks to the thick blanket she'd created.

“You know I can't do that. For more than one reason, in fact,” he pointed out. “Kara, it's not that bad. Really.”

The edge of the blanket was lifted from inside and Mon-El found himself confronted by a pair of blue eyes that shone with anger and unshed tears. “Not that bad?! Not _that_ bad?! I said- I said- _that_ kind of thing! How is-” The rest of Kara's words emerged as incoherent sputtering and she pulled the blanket down so that she was hidden under it again.

“Look, it was your first attempt!” he tried reasoning with her. “Everyone makes mistakes, okay? ...Well, maybe not that great a mistake usually... I mean, I never thought I'd hear... and from _you_ of all people...” He belatedly realised what he was saying and shut up.

“I want to _die_ ,” came the muffled moan from the cloth-covered lump in front of him.

“Come on, Kara...” He briefly considered reaching out to pat her comfortingly on the head – at least, he assumed the topmost part of the lump was her head – when it suddenly occurred to him that he had another way of potentially fixing this mess and decided it was worth a shot. “You know, I've made a mistake like yours before.”

The continued silence and stillness of the blanket mound made him think his latest effort to console her had also failed but then there was some shuffling and she peeked out at him from under the thick fabric, her eyes glassy but filled with a strange and fragile kind of hope. It was actually a really cute sight. But he should probably keep that to himself. “...Really?”

He breathed an internal sigh of relief. “Mhm. See, there was this one time a F'rsakkin emissary came to visit my parents and I was expected to greet him in his native tongue as a sign of respect. What I was supposed to say was 'I graciously welcome you to Daxam' but instead...”

“What did you say instead?” she prodded him, visibly torn between curious and apprehensive. The blanket, he noted, faded in and out of existence. He took it as a good sign.

“I invited him to eat my shoe,” he confessed. “In a very... shall we say... _creative_ manner. Which, I'll have you know, is a really terrible thing to tell someone from a race that is known for despising any kind of footwear. You should have seen the look on his face. And everyone else present, for that matter. My parents in particular were _not_ happy.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth but the gesture was not enough to stifle the giggle that slipped out of her. “That sounds like a diplomatic nightmare.”

“Oh, it was,” he nodded gravely even though he couldn't stop the corners of his mouth from twitching. “We had to give him a _lot_ of exotic goods to placate him. A whole shuttle's worth. Plus the shuttle they were stored in. _And_ I had to sing the apology song. _Every. Single. Verse._ ”

“I'm sure that was very difficult for you,” she commented drily. Ah, so she was capable of being sarcastic again. Another good sign.

“You have _no_ idea.” He let a moment of silence pass as he eyed her carefully. “So... don't feel so bad about your mistake now, do you?”

She broke eye contact and stared downwards. “I still think it doesn't compare to what I said,” she mumbled although she let her blanket construct fade away entirely. “But... yeah. I guess.”

He allowed himself to grin ever so slightly at having succeeded in consoling her before he let it slip in favour of a more gentle smile. “Well then. What now? Still eager to learn Daxamite?”

“...Y-Yes. B-But. Um.” Kara looked up to meet his gaze, flushed and looked back down again as she began wringing her hands. “C-Can we... um... switch to written Daxamite lessons for a while before you try to teach me spoken Daxamite again?”

Mon-El didn't know if he should applaud her for remaining dedicated to her goal or himself for not laughing out loud at her blatant attempt to avoid making yet another disastrous verbal blunder so soon after the last one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it bad that I like writing flustered!Kara? She's just too cute when she's embarrassed (Mon-El would agree with me there... but not out loud or Kara would make him pay for it).
> 
> As for what Kara actually said in Daxamite... I'll leave it up to your imagination. =P


	8. History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lessons continue... and Kara learns more than she expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another long infodump-disguised-as-a-bonding-moment plus... um, angst. So... here, have some tissues in advance.

As it turned out, learning Daxamite in its written form was a better and more efficient way to introduce the language to a new learner compared to its spoken form. (Even if it had proved to have been more difficult this way, Kara didn't think she would have complained. The memory of her disastrous first attempt at speaking in Mon-El's native tongue was still too fresh in her mind for her to contemplate giving it another try so soon.) The lack of computers or even anything they could use as manual writing tools in the dream world meant that they had to rely on their powers to carry out their lessons although neither of them found this arrangement to be disagreeable.

With their duplication experiment serving as a wonderfully handy reference point for a good teaching method, Mon-El started by creating floating constructs of the Daxamite alphabet one at a time. Despite his insistence that he had never tried to teach anyone anything in his life before this – attempts to instil Hal-Ed with a less serious demeanour notwithstanding –, he proved to be a diligent and accommodating tutor. He was never visibly impatient as he waited for her to duplicate each alphabet and gently pointed out the parts where she had made a mistake without making fun of her for it. Once she had perfected the alphabet construct, he moved on to teaching her how to properly pronounce it and had no issue repeating it until she got it right. When she finally mastered the entire Daxamite alphabet, they moved on to common words, sentence structure and so on.

Try as she might, Kara could never stop herself from flushing with pride whenever he complimented her on how quickly she was able to pick up an entirely different language that she had never heard before.

There was a distant kind of awareness that what she was doing was quite bizarre – that under normal circumstances, she would never have believed anyone who told her that she would willingly learn Daxamite, much less from the crown prince of Daxam himself. Yet here she was doing just that... and she was actually _enjoying_ it.

She had not lied when she had told him that she wanted to learn how to speak the language so that they could occasionally converse in his native tongue as a way of repaying him for everything he had done for her so far and would likely do in the foreseeable future. The idea had come to her as a flight of fancy while they had been running their experiments – a by-product of occasionally hearing him mutter to himself in his own language and wondering quietly if he did it because he missed hearing it just like they both missed the small inconsequential pieces of the life they could no longer live. Mortifying blunder aside, she found herself hard-pressed to regret voicing her request when it made him smile like that.

If she was being completely honest with herself, however, there had been another reason to ask for these lessons which had manifested as the idea had slowly but surely taken root in her mind: they represented a particularly unique way of getting the answers to all the questions she had about Mon-El and his life back on Daxam without actually asking the questions herself.

To be fair, it wasn't as if he wasn't talkative or that he liked being mysterious. After all, he had thus far never once refused to answer any of her questions even when the subject matter was obviously a painful one.

Which, in a way, was precisely the problem.

While he was a little clumsy with his words – by his own admission, no less, although she thought he was being too hard on himself as usual –, it was she who seemed to have a talent for asking the worst possible questions that would somehow dredge up the worst possible memories.

Kara hated it. She specifically hated seeing the grey overtake the blue in his eyes as they clouded over with feelings of loss and guilt... but most of all, she hated that she was the one causing it even if indirectly.

No, it was safer to be patient like she had originally planned and let him tell her the story of his life in the form of random tales and little snippets that sometime in the future, she hoped, would allow her to put together a complete picture of the individual known as Mon-El.

The breaks between lessons were the most rewarding in that regard. While they rested, he talked about anything and everything, his voice light and his expression carefree. She couldn't tell if it was because he was that happy to hear his own language being spoken by someone else or not but whatever the reason, she was grateful all the same.

She found out that he loved wordplay and puns. In fact, the more atrocious the pun, the more he loved it. (He shared some of his favourites with her and she groaned loudly at every last one of them although his laughter proved contagious in the end.)

Nes'th had never once appreciated being woken up early in the morning and would actually try to bite him on the few occasions that he roused her at what she deemed to be an unacceptable hour. The only way to appease her had been to bribe her with freshly cooked raz'tal meat that had been seasoned with just the right blend of spices. (She now understood why Bal-Seg had wondered which one of them had been more difficult to deal with.)

After the incident with the F'rsakkin emissary, the first thing he tried to learn whenever he had to pick up a new language after that was the insults. Somehow, she did not find this surprising at all. (“Do you want to know how to say 'Your mother is a three-breasted Thalglarian with bad teeth' in X'thalli?” “No! And eww! Thanks for the mental image, Mon-El!” “You're welcome.”)

During a tense Garata match where he had played against the scion of the Xas house – a particularly contemptible member of Daxam's nobility even by the royal court's standards –, he had gotten so irritated by the man's crude and frankly uninspired insults that he had harassed him for the rest of the game. At one point, he had dived straight at the Xas heir only to pull up and away at the last second, frightening the man to such an extent that he had actually fallen off his mount. (Kara initially thought that Mon-El had gone too far... but when he mentioned that the man regularly struck his dragon among other things, she felt a lot less charitable.)

Bal-Seg never cursed; the tutor had vastly preferred delivering calmly-worded cutting remarks which would leave his targets sputtering like the idiots they were as he walked away. On the other hand, Hal-Ed used to swear like a drunk space dog when he was stressed although he would be so shamefaced immediately afterwards that he would vanish to parts unknown for the rest of the day. (Mon-El was suspiciously evasive when she asked how many times he'd stressed out his personal guard intentionally in order to get just that result.)

She cherished each and every one of these stories that he offered her freely and tucked them away safely in a corner of her heart.

Even so, there were questions which she was sure would remain unanswered if she did not work up the courage to ask them directly. She just hoped that she would be able to avoid stepping on yet another verbal landmine in the process.

(In hindsight, she should have known that would not be the case.)

“Can I ask you something?”

They had only just concluded yet another lesson – she was, by this point, capable of having very simple conversations with him in Daxamite although a few words in particular still tripped her up – when she decided to spring her question on him.

Mon-El gave her a look of fond exasperation. “I thought we'd already established that I'll tell you whatever you want to know. You don't have to keep asking if you can ask me a question, Kara. It's kind of redundant.”

“I just want to be... well, polite, I guess,” she mumbled as she looked down at her feet. “Maybe there'll be a time where you don't really feel like you're up for it so I just want to make sure, that's all.”

“Kara.” When she looked up, she found him giving her a soft smile. “If and when that happens, I'll tell you, okay? And right now I'm telling you that it's fine like usual. So go ahead.”

“Well...” She paused as she tried to figure out the best way to word her question. “The other time, you mentioned that your planet used to be called Sard. How did that change happen? What caused it to be renamed Daxam? I mean, when I studied the history of the war between our planets, there was no mention of your planet having an old name in my lessons.”

“Ah.” The smile slipped from his face and was replaced with an unreadable expression. “I guess I should've expected this to come up sooner or later.”

Kara felt her heart sink. It was starting to feel like she'd unwittingly stumbled on yet another well of unpleasant memories. “If you don't want to talk about it-” she started in an effort to backpedal out of the situation.

“It's not that,” he cut her off, letting out a sigh as he closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his face. “Well, it's not what you think anyway. It's just...” he opened his eyes and gave her a measured look. “You might not like what you hear.”

Confusion creased her brows as she stared back, mystified. “I don't understand.”

Another sigh escaped him and he broke eye contact. For a moment that seemed to stretch on for far too long, there was only silence as she waited for him to say something. “When you said you studied the history of the war between our planets, what exactly did you mean? What did they teach you?”

The question was entirely unexpected and she had no idea how it was related to her own query but she knew that he would not have asked it if it wasn't relevant somehow. “Um...” she trailed off as she wracked her brain for the relevant information. It felt like it had been ages since she had had that particular lesson... which made sense, in a way, considering her sense of time had been scrambled beyond redemption thanks to the dream world's time-warped nature. “Hundreds of years ago, Krypton and Daxam fought a bloody war to a stalemate,” she began reciting from memory. “Thousands of lives were lost on both sides because...” She faltered as doubt began to seep into her voice and mind.

“Because...?” he quietly prompted her.

“...because of a pointless war Daxam started,” she finished hesitantly.

“Of course,” he muttered more to himself than anything before he trained his attention back on her. “In what way was it pointless? Were you ever told a particular reason in the first place?”

“I...” The feeling of uncertainty in her chest continued to grow with every subsequent question that he put forth. “It was because Krypton was a democracy – a world of explorers, philosophers, scientists – and Daxam was a monarchy with kings and queens who ruled a population of hoodlums.”

Even as she recited the information she had been given a lifetime ago, however, she began to realise that something was not quite right. In fact, it didn't make sense at all. Why would a difference in both planet's forms of government lead one to attack the other? To be more precise, why would Daxam care how another planet presided over its people even if said planet was in the same solar system to the point that they would declare war over it?

It was then that the memory of her first heated conversation with Mon-El resurfaced in her mind. “I wouldn't expect someone your age to be capable of seeing anything beyond the self-aggrandising stories your parents probably spoon-fed you about your precious planet from the day you were born,” he had said. Back then, she had been so consumed by her unfounded suspicions and jumbled emotions that she had dismissed his statement as something he had spit out just to get under her skin and had focused solely on the mention of her parents.

But now... now, knowing what she knew about the man before her, she began to wonder.

“It's not true, is it?” she asked softly. “That's not the real reason our planets hated each other, is it?”

He gave her an impressed if slightly muted smile but unlike the other times, Kara found herself unable to feel proud about it. “I know I've said it before but the truth bears repeating: You are very smart for your age.”

The compliment, while greatly appreciated, did little to erase the feeling of uneasiness that had settled in the pit of her stomach. “Did... Was it Krypton that started the war?” she forced herself to ask.

“Yes. No. The truth – what is recorded in the surviving ancient texts stored away in the most restricted area of Daxam's royal library, anyway – is... complicated.” Yet another sigh. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, the very picture of a person in deep contemplation. Another moment of silence passed before he opened his eyes again and scrutinised her carefully. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“I... Yes.”

“You might not like what you hear.”

“You've already said that... and judging by the way you've been talking, I think I probably won't like it. At all.”

“And yet you still want to know?”

“I... I _need_ to know.”

“Why?”

“Because... Because I want to know the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or difficult it might be for me to accept. I don't want to continue believing a lie just because it's easy and convenient.”

“You're a lot more mature than most adults I know. Me included.”

“I think you don't give yourself as much credit as you actually deserve. And I hope you're not trying to distract me again.”

“I'm not, I promise.” A pause. “Last chance to back out.”

“You already know my answer.”

“Very well. You might want to sit down.”

She did as he suggested while he remained standing and waited patiently for him to begin.

“You remember what I told you about how the names of the heirs to the throne are determined, right?” When she nodded, he continued. “Okay. Well, that'll be relevant in a bit but I should probably start at the beginning. Hundreds of years ago, Krypton was only just beginning its space exploration missions in earnest. When it was finally time to try and send people instead of just robots and AIs, a group of Kryptonians comprised of the best and brightest of your planet's Thinker Guild as well as a few members of the Warrior and Labour Guilds was assembled. Their first mission was to explore Krypton's sister planet and report back on everything they could learn about it. The leader of this group was allegedly the most gifted member of the Thinker Guild at that time: a man by the name of Dax-Am.”

To say that Kara was surprised was an understatement. Daxam had gotten its name from a Kryptonian explorer? It was unthinkable. So unthinkable that, paradoxically enough, she found it actually believable. Besides, she knew that Mon-El was not lying to her. He would never lie to her. Especially not about something like this.

Something in her expression must have given away her thoughts because Mon-El offered her an unreadable smile before continuing. “When they arrived on Sard, they were surprised to find a civilisation that was only slightly less technologically advanced than theirs. The king of Sard at that time was Var Dat and upon learning of the explorers' arrival, he received them with open arms and threw them a lavish party. See, Var Dat's name came from the Sardite word 'va'rdt' which means 'host'. When he found out about the appearance of Sard's first interplanetary visitors, he believed that it was the will of the gods that he give them the warmest welcome possible – that this would lead to a bright future for the kingdom.”

“Are you sure he didn't just see it as an excuse to throw a party?” she asked wryly, a part of her eager to find any excuse to lighten the current atmosphere considering she had a feeling things were going to take a grim turn soon.

“You could be on to something there,” he chuckled. “In any case, Dax-Am and his fellow explorers were very impressed by what they had seen of Sard as well as Var Dat's hospitality. When they reported their findings back to Krypton, Dax-Am in particular made sure to highlight all this and express his belief that an alliance would be beneficial for both parties. However, the Kryptonian High Council did not share his views as they considered Sard's monarchy and less-advanced level of technology to be indications that Sardites were inferior on all counts. How could a civilisation governed by people whose only qualifications were their ancestry be considered Krypton's equal? With these thoughts in mind, they determined that forming an alliance would yield no benefits for Krypton and that it would actually be in Sard's favour if Var Dat simply submitted to Krypton's rule.”

“What?!” she sputtered disbelievingly. “But that's just... _wrong_!”

“Dax-Am was of the same opinion,” he said. “He protested – apparently very strongly, if the few surviving entries of his journals are any indication – but the orders given to him and his group were clear: They were to convince Var Dat that ceding his kingdom was the right thing to do. That Sard's future would be made all the brighter under Krypton's... _guidance_.”

The revelation sickened Kara. It was a bitter pill to swallow, this idea that her people had deemed themselves to be in the position to tell others how to live their lives. Even if she didn't quite agree with the idea of anyone being in a position of power simply because they had been born into the right family, she found that she could not in good conscience support the decision the Kryptonian High Council of the past had made. After all, how was imposing their will on Sard without taking the will of the people of Sard into consideration any different from what they were supposedly accusing Var Dat of doing? “What... What happened next?” she asked worriedly.

“The orders caused a split in the group of explorers. Those loyal to Krypton saw it as their duty to do as they were instructed. Meanwhile, Dax-Am and other like-minded Kryptonians balked at the idea of repaying Var Dat's hospitality in such a deplorable fashion. A fight broke out and by the time it was over, all those who had chosen to follow the orders were dead along with several of those who had refused. Following this bloody victory, Dax-Am immediately sought an audience with Var Dat to inform him of Krypton's intentions. He advised the king to strike first so that he would have the advantage of surprise and offered his help in the form of his knowledge and whatever technology they had brought with them on their ships. Enraged by what he had heard, Var Dat swore to reduce Krypton to rubble for their arrogance although he forgave Dax-Am and the other Kryptonians who had chosen to side with Sard. And with that, the war began.”

Her throat had gone dry but she forced herself to speak anyway. “So this is what you meant when you said Krypton was and yet was not the one that started it.”

“Yes. You're taking this rather well,” Mon-El noted with slight surprise.

“I tried to prepare myself for the worst before you began,” she confessed. “The stalemate still happened though, right? I mean, obviously neither planet won. But how did this lead to Sard being renamed Daxam? What happened to Dax-Am in the end anyway?”

He smiled ever so slightly. “Your two questions are actually linked. Dax-Am died a hero's death in the war after having contributed greatly to Sard's ability to combat Krypton's superior forces. In honour of his sacrifice, Var Dat renamed his kingdom Daxam after his fallen friend so that his people would know for all eternity the name of the man who had helped them retain their autonomy. Of course, there are some possibly heretical texts which suggest that Var Dat showed his appreciation for Dax-Am's help in another way as well while he was still alive.”

“How?” she asked, perplexed.

“The oldest of ways: He latched Dax-Am to his firstborn daughter and heir to the throne, Eir Ni. According to these texts, she became pregnant with Dax-Am's child during the war and took no other as her latchmate after his death. This coincided with the introduction of, among other technological advancements, the Birthing Matrix – courtesy of Dax-Am, of course – as well as the 'one offspring a generation' rule into the newly formed kingdom of Daxam's royal succession process.”

She stared at him, dumbstruck. “W-Wait, but doesn't that mean...”

“-that Daxam's royal bloodline could possibly have a touch of Kryptonian in it?” he finished her question for her. “Like I said, they're possibly heretical texts. We don't really have any way of knowing for sure if it's true because a few generations later, someone tried to destroy the records possibly out of shame or disgust at the idea that a Kryptonian had 'stained' the pure lineage of Daxam's royal family. They were only partially successful but the damage had already been done. Meanwhile, Krypton also did their best to pretend that this particular chapter of their history never happened.”

“...How?”

“Well, keep in mind that this is speculation since our side had very little idea of what happened on your side following the stalemate. After suffering such devastating losses, both sides retreated to lick their respective wounds. The assumption was that Krypton did not take its abject failure in regard to its first and last colonisation attempt well. Judging by the fact that you were not taught about any of this, I'm guessing that they erased the event from their historical records entirely just to preserve their pride.”

“...My people weren't exactly very good, were they?” she asked quietly. It made her wonder just what other dark and shameful secrets lurked in Krypton's history... and whether she would ever find out any of them.

“You can't judge an entire race based on the actions of a few, Kara,” he replied gently. “For better or worse. Besides...” He hesitated and she saw his expression cloud over. “They weren't the only ones who made... questionable decisions in the aftermath.”

There was more to this story? “What do you mean?”

“Daxam had paid dearly for their wish to remain free of Krypton's rule. The number of those who had perished in battle numbered in the thousands. That didn't include the amount of damage that had been wrought on the kingdom itself.” He turned away but she could still see the tightness of his expression. “Var Dat was determined to rebuild as quickly as possible in case Krypton attacked again so he used the technology available to him to reach out to other planets beyond our solar system. He needed cheap labour – quickly and with minimum fuss. Less than savoury figures with the means to meet his needs responded. Thus did Daxam's New Age begin – an era of happiness, freedom and prosperity built on the backs of people who had none of those things.”

Realisation dawned on her and she felt her insides churn. “Slaves. You're talking about slaves.”

“Yes.” He still wouldn't look at her.

In light of how differently Mon-El had behaved compared to the initial perception she had of him, she had allowed herself to bury all the other unpleasant things she had heard about his planet. “I forgot they had slavery back on Daxam.”

Impossibly, his expression darkened even further. “There were a lot of things there I didn't agree with.”

The tone of his voice caused a wave of unease unrelated to the topic at hand to wash over her. “...Mon-El?” she whispered his name worriedly.

Nothing.

Anxiety slowly growing with every subsequent beat of silence that passed, Kara got to her feet and gingerly stepped closer and closer until he was right in front of her.

“When I was about your age,” he whispered apropos of nothing, causing her to freeze in the midst of reaching out to touch him, “there was a boy only slightly younger than me. Jyaill, from the desert planet Urdel. I met him when he was scrubbing the floor of one of the palace's many rooms. He was shivering – Daxam was cooler than his native planet and he had not yet become accustomed to the change, he explained.”

She swallowed thickly, certain from his behaviour that this story would not end well... and yet she urged him to continue. “Go on.”

“The solution seemed simple to me: if he needed to feel warmer, he needed to wear better clothes than the tattered rags he had on him. I offered him my shirt but he naturally refused.” The ghost of a smile crossed his face, a strange mix of humour and agony. “So I took off my shirt, tackled him to the ground and forced it on him. When he wouldn't stop thanking me, I got so annoyed I ran away.”

“That was very nice of you,” she commented carefully even as she kept her hand frozen in mid-air, torn between reaching out to touch him and pulling away so as to not disturb him.

“He was caught and tried for the crime of stealing from a member of the royal family,” he continued dully. “When I found out, I went to my parents to clear his name. I thought...” A ragged sound escaped him. “I thought they would listen. They loved me, didn't they? If they loved me, they would listen to what I had to say. But my mother... she said... she said that he should have known his place. Just as I should have known mine. My father... he agreed. It was for my own good, he said. I was weak. Gullible. Foolish. People would not hesitate to take advantage of me. Daxam would fall into ruin if this was how I was going to rule it.”

Kara felt her heart break and brought the tips of her fingers down so that they rested on his arm. “Mon-El-”

“He was executed the next day.” It felt to her as if he was somewhere far away – somewhere neither her voice nor her touch could reach him. The thought terrified her to no end. “Because of me. Because of what I did without thinking. Because I didn't know my place. I should have known my place.”

Desperate, she wrapped her hand around his wrist and squeezed it in an attempt to get him to look at her. “You were just trying to do something good,” she insisted as her vision blurred with unshed tears. “You didn't know.”

He met her gaze but his eyes, now almost completely devoid of blue, seemed to look right through her. “I should have,” he replied hollowly. “I should have known my place.”

She couldn't bear it any longer. Mustering all the strength she had in her body, she tugged his arm downwards sharply. Caught unawares, Mon-El stumbled and fell to his knees, her actions bringing him close to her eye level and causing him to nearly crash into her on the way down. Having achieved her goal, Kara threw her arms around his neck and hugged him as tightly as she could. “I'm sorry,” she whispered.

He was so still. If not for the fact that she could feel his chest expanding and constricting with every breath he took, it would have been easy to believe that he had turned to stone. “What are you apologising for?” he asked, his voice so subdued she doubted she would have heard him if not for their incredibly close proximity.

“I...” She faltered but refused to second-guess her actions or her words. “I don't really know. But I just... I just thought you needed to hear it from someone.”

Silence descended upon them and it stretched on for far too long before he brought it to an end by speaking again. “I started taking drugs after that. To dull the pain and the memories. I just... wanted to stop... _feeling_.”

“We can't will ourselves to not feel anything,” she pointed out softly. “Life doesn't work like that.”

A rattling sound left his lips – a cruel imitation of a laugh that reverberated in her bones and her soul, leaving a death-like chill in its wake. “On Daxam, that's exactly what we'd do. We'd drug ourselves so we literally didn't feel anything if we so chose. Bal-Seg... he didn't approve. He understood but he didn't approve. I asked him what else I could do. If I could change things when I became king. If I could put an end to the slavery and grant others like Jyaill proper rights so that something like this never happened again.”

“What did he say?”

“That it was a fool's errand. That it would get me killed. That, barring a few possible exceptions, the noble houses would rather have me assassinated than give up their slaves. That, should this happen, Daxam would be plunged into a civil war as they fought for the throne. That hundreds of slaves and innocent people would die in the process. That, if I truly wanted to change things, I would have to do things very slowly and carefully. And that, no matter what, I would never live to see the outcome I desired.”

“...That sounds... harsh.”

“The truth usually is. Bal-Seg was ever the realist and never one to mince his words.”

“I think... I think if it was you, however, you might have been able to do it. Change things for the better at the very least, if you had been given the chance.”

“You don't know that for sure.”

“...No, I don't. But for what it's worth, I think you would have made a fine king.”

Another laugh escaped him, but while it was still shaky it didn't sound as hollow as the one that had preceded it. “You know, Bal-Seg said the same thing. Just before the end.”

The corners of her lips curved upwards ever so slightly. “He sounds very wise. I would've liked to have been able to meet him, I think.”

She couldn't tell for sure, but she got the sense that he might be smiling just a little as well. “I think he would've loved to meet you too. Good thing for me that'll never happen though since the two of you would've totally ganged up on me. 'At last,' he would say, 'someone else willing to call you an idiot.' My life would've been utterly miserable.”

“Probably,” she agreed readily.

“...You can let go already, you know,” he murmured after a while.

“I know,” she murmured back. “But I don't want to.”

Mon-El raised his arms slowly – the first time he had moved since she'd pulled him to his knees – and wrapped them cautiously around her as if she was the one who was in danger of falling apart if he was not careful. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Kara just hugged him tighter. “You're welcome.”

They stayed like that, quiet and still, for a fraction of an eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this chapter ended up being way longer than I intended but there were some opinions/thoughts/etc. I have about certain things in the show (but mostly in the fandom) that I felt I had to put into fic form if only to get it off my chest. I don't really want to go off on a long rant here though since most of you probably just came to read this story so I'll leave it at that.
> 
> In any case, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Or, well, as much as one is able to enjoy angst anyway... >_>


	9. What-Ifs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara and Mon-El discuss what could have been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter of this arc and I give you a bit of everything to celebrate! We've got angst, humour, fluff, world-building... a nice proper sendoff! Hope you like it!

'We are temporal beings; what would we know of life beyond the prison that is Time?'

The quote popped up in Mon-El's head out of the blue while talking about the time one of his pranks had gone horribly wrong, resulting in the destruction of an old clock some foreign dignitary had gifted to his parents – a hazy memory of a day Bal-Seg had tried to beat some philosophical garbage into his skull for whatever reason. He remembered having complained that he didn't see how this was relevant to his everyday life, much less his future responsibility of ruling Daxam but had only gotten a whack on the head and an earful of grumbling about the new generation having no appreciation for intellectual thought for his trouble.

The sound of his name and a touch on his arm drew him out of his recollection and he looked down to find Kara staring up at him questioningly. He shared what had been on his mind freely, seeing no need to keep it to himself, only for her to surprise him by stating that she'd heard a quote like that before in her lessons. What ensued was a playful argument as to whose side had come up with it first, the story of the broken clock forgotten for the moment. (He finished it much later, having remembered that he had not done so while they were in the midst of trying to turn the sky purple on a whim, and she laughed as he described his ridiculous and ultimately failed attempt to fix the antiquated contraption.)

Exaggerated accusations of plagiarism aside, they found themselves agreeing that they might have found an answer to the question the unknown philosopher had posed. Eternity, they determined, was a concept that was much easier to ponder than it was to experience. Robbed of their sense of time, they slowly but surely lost any sense of urgency as they lazily drifted from one activity to another depending on their moods and interests. Similarly, conversation flowed freely as did the laughs and the occasional tears depending on whether the memories that surfaced every now and then were happy or sad ones.

Somewhere along the way, the goal of finding a means to leave the dream world faded from their minds, replaced gradually by a sense of resignation and acceptance. The question of how they had wound up in this situation in the first place also became inconsequential; they were here now and there was little to no point puzzling over something they doubted they would ever be able to understand.

Not that anything else seemed to matter. They had each other for company and their powers with which to occupy themselves. That was enough. More than enough, in fact, since nearly everything became possible over time and both of them were equally eager to keep pushing themselves.

They invented their own one-on-one version of Garata, taking turns at both creating the ball and accusing the person in charge of maintaining the ball construct of rigging the game in their favour. (Where Mon-El had the upper hand in terms of technique and experience, Kara made up for it with recklessness born from a fiercely competitive streak that reminded him somewhat of what he had seen of her mother's skills in the courtroom long ago.)

Kara mastered Daxamite at the end of countless lessons, becoming so fluent in Mon-El's native tongue that he told her she could pass herself off as, at the very least, a long-time resident of his planet. (She was pretty sure the idea of a Kryptonian living on Daxam even for a short while would probably trigger a war between their planets, hypothetically speaking, but decided she didn't really care because Mon-El was smiling that smile of his that highlighted the blue in his eyes just so.)

Mon-El shared more random stories about his life back on Daxam, something which over time convinced Kara to balance things out by sharing snippets of her own life, however short it was compared to his. (He surprised her when he indirectly revealed that there had actually been a significant number of normal Daxamite citizens who had worked in the royal palace alongside the slaves. The ensuing discussion somehow ended with her becoming aware that the Labour Guild back on Krypton had not been treated much better compared to the servants in Daxam's royal palace. It was not a happy realisation.)

Talking, playing, bickering, experimenting... they did it all as and when it suited them. They kept pushing themselves where their powers were concerned and before long, they were able to carry out feats they had initially believed to have been beyond their capabilities. Night fell if they so wished and the stars were theirs to rearrange however they pleased. The landscape bent to their will, fields of green seamlessly transforming into metal floors and walls. As for creating organic constructs, they saw no reason to stop at dragons and created all kinds of creatures they had ever seen or heard of before although they naturally quibbled when their recollections did not align. (“I'm telling you, Mon-El, zhivrii are bigger than this. I saw them up close when my family visited Baransi so I definitely know what I'm talking about.” “You were _six_ , Kara. _Everything_ looks huge when you're that small.”)

(Aside from a few brief occasions just to show each other how someone looked in life, they avoided making constructs of people. It was entirely too unsettling in more than one way.)

They became like gods in the dream world. While the rules still applied to some extent, their endurance levels had grown to the point where their constructs were more likely to disappear due to boredom instead of exhaustion.

And still eternity stretched on.

 

* * *

 

“Do you ever think about it?”

They were in the middle of another experiment – one that both of them agreed pushed the boundaries of their powers and what they knew about the dream world's nature: collaboration. The idea had originated from a half-serious complaint Kara had voiced after yet another game of Garata peppered with accusations of Mon-El misusing his turn at creating the ball to deny her a goal. Exasperated yet bemused, he had offhandedly commented that the only way to settle the issue once and for all would be to find a way for both of them to create the ball together.

Which was how they ended up trying to create a single construct together, finally settling on a monument which was a popular tourist attraction on one of the few planets both of them had been to in the past – the limitation came mostly from the fact that Kara had understandably visited far fewer planets compared to Mon-El – after quite a bit of excessively serious deliberation over what the construct itself should be.

Mon-El tore his attention away from the construct which was taking longer to assume its final intended form than he was now used to – he was almost sure it hadn't taken this long even when they had first started their experiments – and cast his gaze in Kara's direction. “Think about what?”

There was a flicker of hesitation in her features and most of all her eyes that appeared and disappeared in the short beat of silence that followed. It was always there, he noticed, whenever she was trying to work up the courage to ask him a question she was afraid would upset him somehow. He had lost count of the number of times he'd tried to break that habit of hers by reassuring her that he would never take offence only to fail in the end. “About what things would have been like if my planet hadn't... you know.”

“Ah. Well...” he trailed off as he mulled the question. If he was being entirely honest with himself, he didn't actually miss his life on Daxam aside from a few parts of it here and there. It was a bit of a relief, in a way, to be here in the dream world, free of the burdens and responsibilities which had weighed heavily on his shoulders. The sentiment made him feel somewhat guilty, however; did this count as running away from his duties and his people? Even if the system was more than a little broken and he didn't think he could change it for the better, his people still needed someone to lead them and take their needs into consideration. Not that it mattered right now, considering he was not in this dream world of his own volition and he had no idea what had actually happened to his people in the aftermath.

A foreign presence in his mind jarred him out of his dark musings – a golden light that radiated warmth and left trails of brilliant blue in its wake as it tangled itself among his thoughts. He didn't have to wonder where it had come from – it had first made its appearance at the edge of his consciousness when they had begun their collaborative work on the monument. “Mon-El?” he heard her call out, an undercurrent of concern in her voice that he could feel in his soul through the golden light. It was her, somehow, no doubt about it.

He kept the observation to himself.

“There's nothing much to think about,” he said out loud. “I mean, my path in life was set the moment I was born after all. I would have continued my lessons up until the time my parents decided to abdicate the throne and become king. Not too sure about who I would've been latched to by then though.”

She frowned. “But didn't you say that latchings were determined at the moment of birth on Daxam? Or does that not apply to the royal family? I mean, Var Dat _did_ supposedly latch his daughter to Dax-Am and I doubt he was able to know in advance that Dax-Am was going to be showing up when she was born... oh, but you said they could be heretical texts so it might not be true...”

“It's complicated, I'll give you that,” he chuckled. “All right, let me see if I can clear this up a little for you. The birth of every Daxamite is marked with a small ceremony at the local temple where the head priest would pray to each of the gods for the child's wellbeing. Royal children just have a more elaborate one that's paired with the naming ritual. When it came to Yuda, the goddess of love and unions, however, it wasn't so much a prayer as a request for a sign as to who the child was born to be with. The details of how this leads to the matches is a closely guarded secret though – only the head priests of all the temples across Daxam know. In the case of Dax-Am and Eir Ni, one heretical text claims that when she was born, the signs pointed to her future latchmate being 'a saviour from the stars' which was how Var Dat justified their latching.”

“I see...” Kara mulled over the new information for a moment before she spoke up again. “And what about you? Or are you not supposed to know who your latchmate will be until the day of the latching?”

Mon-El shook his head. “No, everyone is told several years in advance. I don't really know the details but apparently there was something off about the signs the seer received from Yuda in my case so I was never officially assigned a latchmate. Guess they were going to wait and see – didn't want to offend the gods, after all.”

“Well, that's good, isn't it?” she said. “I mean, that probably means you would never have been forced to get latched to someone you didn't care about.”

Another shake of the head. “It would've only been a matter of time. I doubt my parents would've run the risk of me dying without leaving an heir behind so they would likely have arranged something before they abdicated. Even if they had to take liberties with how Yuda's wishes were to be interpreted.”

She scowled. “I don't like it,” she muttered under her breath. While she understood that this was how things were done on Daxam, she felt that it was incredibly unfair for Mon-El to be latched to someone who would likely only care about him as the crown prince and not him as a person. The very idea of this hypothetical woman giving him anything less than the love and respect he deserved upset her to no end.

Her unpleasant thoughts were interrupted by the sensation of a foreign presence brushing against her mind in a gentle yet insistent manner. Mon-El. She didn't know how she knew but considering she had first noticed it when they had begun their collaboration experiment, she felt confident that it was him she was sensing in her head. Besides, there was the fact that the presence manifested as a stream of energy that was a familiar shade of blue and grey in colour which flowed through her mind like a soothing breeze, sweeping away her irritation and leaving a welcome sense of peace in its wake. It couldn't be anything – anyone – else.

Like him, she too kept this observation to herself.

“I appreciate the sentiment, just so you know,” Mon-El smiled. “But what about you? Do you think about the life you could have led if things hadn't turned out the way they did?”

“A little,” she confessed. “I would've taken my Guild Test by now, I think, and sometimes I wonder what the results would have been like.”

He furrowed his brow. “Guild Test... I remember hearing about it before but the significance escapes me right now.”

“It's like an aptitude examination all Kryptonian children take when they're thirteen to determine which Guild they would be most suited to join,” Kara explained eagerly, happy that she was the one teaching him instead this time. “After that, they're assigned a mentor who is a senior member of that Guild and they learn from that mentor for three years. At the end of that training period, they're officially recognised both as a member of the Guild and an adult in Kryptonian society.”

“Interesting...” he murmured thoughtfully before everything she said fully sank in. “Wait, you're not even thirteen yet?”

“I'm twelve,” she informed him. “Come to think of it, we never did ask each other's age before this. What's yours?”

“I'm twenty-seven,” he replied and rolled his eyes when she stared at him in shock. “Before you say anything, I remember being twelve, okay? Everyone above twenty was 'old' in my eyes back then too. For that matter, I thought everyone fourteen and above was old when I was five.”

“Why fourteen?” she asked confusedly. “Why that specific number?”

“Daxamites are considered adults the moment they are fourteen years old and complete their rite of passage,” he clarified.

To think that their planets had been so close to each other and yet had been so different in even the smallest of ways such as when a person was considered an adult... 'fascinating' was an understatement. “Oh. What does this rite of passage entail?”

Mon-El grinned and opened his mouth to answer.

“Never mind,” she cut him off hastily before he could say a word, having recognised that glint in his eyes as a clear sign of danger. “I think I'm better off not knowing.”

“You sure you don't want to know?” he asked teasingly and felt the golden light in his head pulse angrily. Oops. Guess she didn't appreciate his barely hidden attempt to embarrass her. “Okay, okay, no sharing that bit of information. Back to your Guild Test; which Guild do you think you would've ended up in?”

Grateful that he'd changed the topic himself, Kara decided against finding some way to get back at him for teasing her. “The Thinker Guild like my father, I guess. Although there's a chance I would've qualified for a specialised role like my mother did.”

Mon-El hummed. “Well, I think you would've excelled no matter what you ended up doing.”

There was no stopping the blush that coloured her cheeks. “Really?”

“Mhm. Although...” The critical look he gave her put her on alert. “I think 'Garata player' is definitely not something I'd recommend for you.”

“What? Why would you say that?” Not that she wanted to be one, that is; while she did enjoy playing their version of the game with Mon-El, she didn't think she liked the idea of doing it her entire life.

He stared at her incredulously. “Kara, in our last Garata game _you threw yourself off your dragon to try and tackle me in mid-air just to prevent me from scoring_. You're lucky I managed to recover quickly enough to not only catch you but also prevent us from falling out of the sky!”

Her cheeks reddened again but for an entirely different reason. “Th-That was one time! And I knew you'd make sure I was fine! Besides, there's nothing in the rules which says that isn't allowed!”

“There aren't any rules against it _because nobody ever thought anyone would be crazy enough to attempt something like that_!” he pointed out in disbelief. “In a normal game, I don't know if it would be more terrifying for me to be your teammate or your opponent.”

“...But you'd catch me either way, right?” she asked hesitantly.

He stared blankly at her. “Well, of course,” he stated as if it was obvious. “I mean...” He shot her a grin. “I doubt I'd be able to enjoy playing Garata any more if you got injured during a game.”

“Is that... Is that what you would've preferred to do?”

Her unexpected question took him by surprise. “What do you mean?”

“It's just...” She glanced away towards the monument which had begun fading in and out of existence due to their mutual lack of focus and distracted herself by reinforcing it. It proved to be a poor choice as far as distractions went since all it did was strengthen the presence of the blue-grey energy in her head. “It seems to me as if you didn't really like being the prince. If you hadn't been born the prince... if you had a choice, what kind of life would you have wanted to live instead?”

“...Well,” he started softly as he too refocused on their little project and felt the golden light weave itself deeper into his mind as a result. “I told you what the source of my name is, right?”

Kara nodded. “The Sardite word 'm'onel' which means 'wanderer'. You said it was fitting because you liked to travel.”

“I might actually have been understating it a little,” Mon-El chuckled. “I was a nightmare to deal with in more than one way on Daxam even as a child. I didn't just avoid showing up for my lessons; I snuck out of the royal palace on more than one occasion just to go and explore the city. It drove my tutors crazy and if it wasn't the pranks I pulled on them, it was my tendency to run off to Rao knew where that made them quit. Only Bal-Seg bothered to hunt me down and drag me by the ear back to the palace so that he could force me to endure his lecturing.”

“I can't help but feel sorry for Bal-Seg every time you tell me how much of a brat you were... then I realise you probably haven't improved since then and I feel even more sorry for him,” she sighed.

“My lessons were boring, okay?” he defended himself. “Economics and all that other stuff put me to sleep. The sciences were useful for devising my pranks, I'll have to admit, but I was only really interested in learning about other planets and cultures.” His expression turned wistful. “I just... I wanted to see the universe.”

She bit her lip, her sorrow over his circumstances compelling her to say something yet denying her the ability to find the right words at the same time. “I'm sorry,” she whispered for lack of anything better to say and tried to push her thoughts and feelings into his mind through their new and tenuous connection in a clumsy effort to comfort him.

He sent a wave of gratitude her way through the link in return. “Well, it's not like I didn't get to do that at all in my capacity as the crown prince. And... well...” he smirked. “I did bring quite a number of beautiful ladies to some very nice planets. In the name of... fostering good relations between our people, of course.”

“I don't think I want to hear about this,” she muttered sourly, a scowl twisting her features.

A snicker escaped him even as he held his hands up in surrender. “All right, I can take a hint.” His expression softened into something a little less mischievous. “Want to see something really cool?”

“...Am I going to regret saying yes?” she asked warily.

“You won't, I promise,” he assured her. “It's one of my first... well, adventures, you could say. Completely child-friendly. I mean, I was a child myself that time, so.”

Kara eyed him carefully for a moment before nodding. “...All right then.”

“Great!” His grin was positively infectious and she had to repress the urge to grin back at him if only to keep him from thinking she'd been won over so easily. “Okay, I'm going to need to focus for this one since it's been a while and my memory's a little rusty.” He gestured at the monument. “Do you mind?”

“I suppose not,” she murmured as she disentangled her mind from the construct and watched as it faded away once he too stopped focusing on keeping it together. It was regretful, she thought to herself; she'd only just started getting used to feeling his presence in her head.

She shook the thought away, wondering where in the world it had come from, and decided to just watch Mon-El create what looked like the entrance to an ancient building of some kind. The amusement she derived from seeing him muttering to himself, his face scrunched up in deep concentration, was interrupted, however, when she heard something unexpected.

Laughter. Specifically, a boy's laughter.

When she spun on her heels in search of the source of the sound, she found herself confronted by the sight of a ghostly image of a boy around her age running past her.

Her first instinct was to scream in surprise which she would argue was only natural. Then the boy turned his head and they locked gazes.

The shape of his face and the messy hair were vaguely familiar but the eyes... she knew those eyes all too well.

'Chase me,' the glint in his eyes and the impish curve of his lips seemed to say, and she watched in silence as he disappeared into the construct. For a brief moment, she let herself wonder what it would have been like if they were the same age. If anything would be different between them.

“Done!”

Mon-El's exclamation drew her attention back to him, causing her earlier musings to disappear without a trace, and she looked up to find him holding his hand out to her. The invitation was clear.

She took it without hesitation.

“You're going to like this. Trust me,” he said as he led her through the entrance of his construct which she supposed would look bizarre to anyone else since its edges faded into thin air.

“I think I'd feel a lot more sure about that if I knew what I was walking into. Literally,” she replied wryly. “On that note, is it too much to ask for you to add some light in here? And maybe make the floor a little smoother?”

“I want it to be a surprise, okay? And leave the floor alone. I'm going for authenticity.”

“If I end up tripping and falling flat on my face, I'll show you exactly how much I appreciate your love for 'authenticity'.”

“I don't see how it's my fault if you're that clumsy.”

Despite his words, he squeezed her hand in reassurance. _I won't let you fall._

She squeezed back. _I know._

“Okay, we're here,” he said after a long while of them walking deeper and deeper into the construct, taking a few turns here and there along the way. If not for the fact that she had seen a series of old drawings on the walls they passed which seemed to depict a great deal of fighting, she was sure she would have had trouble believing that he hadn't just led them around in circles for fun.

“And here is... where, exactly?” she asked only to immediately get her answer when he willed the torches on the walls to flare to life. She gasped.

“Congratulations,” he told her with a grin. “You are now the only non-Daxamite to ever see Vell Or's tomb. Even if this is just a construct based on it.”

Kara didn't bother to respond to him, her attention completely focused on taking in the intricate drawings on the walls and the rather intimidating statues that looked like they were about to spring to life and attack her for disturbing the final resting place of the first king of Sard.

Mon-El, for his part, just stayed out of the way and watched as she studied every little detail of the tomb with an unrestrained look of awe on her face. It filled him with a strange sense of pride, knowing not only that he could show her these things but also that she was able to appreciate everything he showed and told her. Every question she asked was intelligent and showcased her inquisitiveness and he gladly answered all of them.

“Thank you,” she told him sincerely once she had exhausted her curiosity and he let the construct of Vell Or's tomb fade away so that they were once again standing in the middle of an endless field of green. “For sharing that with me.”

He shrugged casually but his grin betrayed his true feelings. “You're welcome. I'm glad you liked it.”

“You know...” she trailed off and looked down at her feet as a bout of shyness suddenly overtook her. “I'm pretty sure I've said something like this before but I just wanted to say it again... despite the circumstances that led up to us being here, I'm really happy I got to meet you. A-And eternity isn't so bad with you around.”

“I feel the same way,” he replied with a soft smile on his face. “It's a bit sad that it took such an unfortunate situation for our paths to cross though.”

A thoughtful frown crossed her features. “I'd like to think that we would've met no matter what.”

One of his eyebrows arched. “And how would that work? Our planets hated each other with a burning passion, we're fifteen years apart in age...”

“If it is what Rao wishes, it will happen,” she responded firmly. “And I can't think of any other reason we're here right now in this dream world together than that Rao willed it to be so.”

“Not the kind of reasoning that can be backed with any kind of science known to us,” he chuckled, “but I'll take it.”

“I don't hear you volunteering any possible alternatives,” she pointed out drily.

“Hey, you started this so I don't need to volunteer anything. And I agreed with you, didn't I?”

“You're the one who brought science into the discussion. That kind of means you have to suggest a scientific reason.”

“Well, I had that one theory when we first discovered our powers but I'm pretty sure we both agreed that we didn't like the idea of some mad scientist kidnapping us and sticking us in a simulation, so.”

The rejoinder she meant to fire at him fled her mind when she felt a tremor run through her entire body, causing her to stumble and nearly fall to her knees.

“Kara?!” In the span of a heartbeat, Mon-El had run over and clasped his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I don't...” Her vision blurred, the sight of his worried face fading in and out to be replaced with... her pod's console? “Mon-El... something's wrong.”

“Stay with me, Kara,” he urged, his concern evident in his tone. “Focus on the sound of my voice.”

“I'm... I'm trying.” The flashing red lights and strange beeping were disrupting her concentration. It didn't help that her body was sending her brain conflicting information: somehow she was both sitting down alone in her pod and standing in the field with Mon-El's hands squeezing her shoulders. She felt like she was going to be sick. “Mon-El, I'm scared,” Kara whispered as she raised her hands to clutch his arms in a desperate bid to anchor her senses.

“Shh, it's okay. I'm right here, Kara. There's nothing to be afraid of.” His voice sounded so terrifyingly far away.

Another tremor rippled through her small frame, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut-

 

* * *

 

-and when she opened them again, she was sitting in her pod which was resting in the small crater it had made in a half-barren field surrounded by small hills.

Mind reeling and heart pounding, she looked up to find an unfamiliar man dressed in a blue and red outfit adorned with her family crest, his hand outstretched and his silhouette framed by the rays of a yellow sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CLIFFHANGER! (But I bet a lot of you saw this coming, haha.)
> 
> Anyway, that's a wrap on Arc 1 of Paradise in a Dream!
> 
> First of all, I would like to thank everyone who has read, subscribed to, left kudos on and commented on this fic especially (but not limited to and in no particular order) akane171, 862euv, Crimson, Jrom0824, Sara, katie, yeratimelord_katniss, Madelie, Sarah, RRAS... I'm pretty sure I'm missing out a few people here and there but I just want all of you guys to know that I'm very grateful for your support and I always look forward to your comments. =D
> 
> Secondly, if I could ask for your help in the form of a little poll: what side ships would you be interested in seeing in this fic? I tend to just follow canon when it comes to these things but considering the drastic AU nature of this fic, I'm open to taking a few liberties with this aspect as well. Since the production of this fic doesn't have to move to Vancouver after an arc or two (haha? ...I thought it was a funny joke...), Season 1 characters are fair game as well. So what ships do you guys want to see? Which girl with the initials LL do you prefer to see with James: Lucy or Lena? And what about Winn? Lena? Eve? Heck, you can even vote for Lena/Maxwell if you want. Let me know in the comments! (You're not obligated to vote, just so you know. Also, Sanvers and J'onn/M'gann will be following the canon timeline so you don't have to vote on that one.)  
> EDIT: Just wanted to make something clear about what will become of the results of this poll: the focus of this fic will still be Karamel since this is a Karamel fic at its core. While these side ships will still get developed and featured wherever relevant/important, I will not be focusing too much on them as they are, after all, meant to be side ships. I'm making this clear so you don't get worried about Karamel getting sidelined or get your hopes up about the side ships. Thank you very much.
> 
> Anyway, I'll be taking a short break at this point to recharge and iron some kinks out of the next arc. In the meantime, would any of you like to guess where the story is going to go from here? You don't have to, but I'm curious as to how many of you will be able to guess right, haha.
> 
> In any case, Arc 2 will begin two weeks from now so I'll see you then! ^_^


End file.
